Small Packages
by gidgetgirl
Summary: 5 years post Chosen, Buffy, Willow, and Xander are running a preschool for little Slayers, when Faith returns with a 3 year old daughter who can speak to the dead. COMPLETE!
1. No Biting

DISCLAIMER: Joss Whedon owns all of the BtVS and AtS related characters.  I own Kaya and the other little ones.

SUMMARY: Five years post Chosen, Willow, Buffy, and Xander are running a preschool for young Potentials and otherwise magically gifted little ones, when Faith returns with a three year old daughter able to communicate with the dead.  Everyone dead at the end of Buffy Season seven is still dead in this fic, regardless of Angel Season Five.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: No, I should not be starting another fic.  Yes, I know that, but I'm insomniac girl tonight, and this plotline refuses to let me sleep until I write its first chapter… slave to the muse and all that.  Anyway, time is tight and the fics are many, so please let me know if you're interested in reading this fic.  Otherwise, it could get shelved quickly, because I am an evil fanfic author with too many stories and not enough time.  Darned Muse.

SMALL PACKAGES: Chapter One

            The sign was hand painted with rainbow letters and hung on the outside of the modestly sized, cheerfully white building.  

            SUNNY POTENTIAL PRESCHOOL: because we see the potential in every child.  To those who worked there, the school's name held a different meaning, but to the outside world in their Cleveland suburb, Potential was just a small, privately run preschool with some of the toughest admission criteria in the state.

            Inside the school, class was proceeding as usual.   

"And what letter is this?" the teacher asked her students softly, drawing a letter in the air with the tip of her index fingers, leaving a trail of light in her wake.

            "G," whispered a brown haired child in an almost inaudible voice, looking down at the ground.  She was painfully shy.

            Willow smiled at the little girl.  Though she never would have admitted it, of all the children in her class, silent, tentative, and very inappropriately named Valentine Thomas was her favorite.  The child had been with them almost six months, and though she wasn't the most powerful of the children, she had a sweetness about her that Willow held close to her heart.  

            "What did you say, Val?" Willow whispered encouragingly, smiling at the child.

            Val looked up at Willow from underneath her light brown hair and smiled, ducking her head shyly.  "G," she whispered again.

            "IT'S A G!" Claire, a four year old blonde-haired, blue-eyed one person wrecking ball, yelled out at the top of her lungs, unable to contain her excitement.  Val offered Claire a tentative smile, and always friendly, Claire grinned and then turned her angelic face to Willow.  "We're right, huh?" she shouted.   "Val and me, we're right."

            Willow nodded.  "Way with the rightness," she confirmed before continuing on with the lesson, the magical letter staying perfectly in tact in the air.  "And what starts with the letter G?" she asked, the smiling spreading naturally over her face.  The kids' excitement was contagious.

            "Games," Claire shouted, trying to give Willow a not so subtle hint that it was just about time for recess.

            "Goran powder," a little boy, one of their more advanced magic students at the ripe old age of almost five, said confidently.  The only boy in Willow's group, he was sitting a good two feet away from the three little girls, disgust clear on his little male face.  As Brandon had informed Willow loftily that morning, he didn't play with _girls_ anymore.  

            Willow nodded.  "That's right," she said cheerfully.  "What else?"

            "Glaive," a little voice piped up.  "Is it Fun with Weapons Time yet?"  Noelle, dressed as always in a very feminine dress, loved Fun with Weapons Time and didn't like much else.  Willow had no idea why her mother put the little tomboy in a dress every day, because by the time Noelle left Potential each afternoon, the dress was either filthy or very literally in shreds.    

            "WEAPONS!" Claire yelled out, full blast.  Val shrank back.  Unlike Noelle and Claire, Val wasn't a Slayer and she never would be, and the timid girl didn't share Noelle's love of all things gory or Claire's penchant for destruction.

            Willow looked around.   Noelle was right; it was time for a mild and wacky weapons session for the little Slayers.  It helped them let off extra energy just before reading time, but Buffy was still in the office, Xander hadn't come back from naptime with the littlest ones, and Willow so wasn't up to doing anything involving Noelle, Claire, and anything sharp and/or pointy.

            "I don't want to do weapons," Brandon complained.  "Weapons are for _girls."  Since all of the slayers at the school were girls, Brandon had never met a little boy who could handle a crossbow the way the girls could, and so he naturally assumed that weapons, along with dolls and dress-up, were for girls, and girls were to be avoided at all cost.  _

            "GIRLS!" Claire belted out, just to be yelling something.

            Val, as usual, said nothing, and Noelle looked to be about five seconds away from pummeling Brandon into the ground.  Willow looked toward the office door.  Buffy was supposed to be interviewing a potential student, but surely she would be free soon.

            They had nine full time students now, and Willow knew that unless Dawn suddenly changed her mind and decided to move back home and go to a college a little West Coast-ish and a little more Ohio-y, they would have a hard time dealing with any more.  Still, the red-haired wicca knew that Buffy wouldn't turn a needy child away from Potential, a child who needed the kind of guidance and support only they could give.  

            Willow sighed.  The natives were clearly getting restless, and she knew that Alphabet Time was just about over.  "Let's go check on Uncle Xander," she said.  She was 'Miss Willow,' and Buffy was 'Miss Buffy,' but no one, not even the children, could bring themselves to call Xander 'Mr. Xander.'  

            Willow stood up, and almost instantly, Val had silently slipped her tiny hand into Willow's.  Will smiled down at the girl, and shyly, Val grinned back.

            Claire ran out of the room, full speed, turning a few circles while she was at it and jumping madly around.  "UNCLE XANDER!" she yelled.

            "Indoor voice," Willow called after Claire.  "The little guys might still be sleeping."

            "Great," Brandon muttered, following Willow out of the room.  "More girls."

            Willow stifled a grin.  Of the five littlest students, those under the age of four, three were girls and slayers and two were boys.  Brandon was just broody enough to see the dark side of things.         

            By the time Willow got to the Nap Room, Claire had already flung open the door and was well on her way to orchestrating a pillow fight with Noelle.

            Willow scanned the room and did a quick mental survey.  The twins, Chinese and small for their three years, were babbling to each other in a makeshift language that no one but the two of them understood.  The two-year-old Potential, the newest addition to their school, was running around the room in circles, falling down every so often, and in the corner, one little boy was just about to sink his teeth into the other little boy's leg.

            Xander was asleep in the middle of the room, snoring lightly.

            "Drew!" Willow yelled, raising her voice and getting the little werewolf's attention.  Drew paused moments before sinking his teeth into his best friend's calf.  "What's the number one rule here?"  Willow asked sternly.

            "No biting," all of the children chorused at once.  

            "That's right," Willow said.  One little wolfie was plenty for any preschool, even one as eclectic as Potential.

            Looking down at Xander, Willow sighed.  This was exactly why Xander usually wasn't in charge of naptime.  He always ended up napping, and none of the kids ever did.

            Willow grinned wickedly.  "Dog pile on top of Uncle Xander!" she said.  Immediately, eight of the children threw themselves on top of Xander.  Val stood back, still holding Willow's hand.

            Xander's eyes flew open as he was hugged, kissed, bounced on, and pummeled all at once.  "I'm awake," he said, holding up his only free hand in defeat.  "I'm awake."

            Screaming with laughter, the kids continued to attack him.  Willow gave him a little nod.

            "That's what you get for falling asleep on the job," she said, only half joking.

            Xander stood up, sweeping two of the girls into his arms and manfully ignoring the three children attached to his legs.

            "Fun with Weapons," Noelle insisted, tugging on his pant leg.  The lace at the bottom of her dress was already starting to fall off, torn during the dog pile.

            Xander looked back at Willow.  "Where's Buff?" he asked.

            "WHERE IS MISS BUFFY?" Claire boomed, a good natured smile on her face and her arms firmly wrapped around Xander's leg.  

            "Only one of us can make it.  You put up a valiant fight," Buffy said, addressing her box of Chinese carry out morosely.  Picking up her chopsticks, Buffy went after the last bit of noodles left in the box.  "At least you've died with honor," she said.  Then she grinned childishly.  "In my tummy," she added.  The fact that she spent all day with people under the age of five was starting to show.

            The chopsticks slipped, and Buffy dropped the last bite on the ground.  She sighed and glared at the chopsticks for a moment before licking them off and tucking them into the waistband of her skirt.  Though they were completely evil as eating utensils, wooden chop sticks made for useful no muss no fuss slaying weapons.  

Buffy leaned back, putting her feet up on the desk, looking at her nails.  Between slayage and sand box-age, they weren't exactly French manicure perfect.  She looked at the clock on the wall.  Her two o'clock appointment hadn't showed up yet, and it was already two fifteen.

            When she heard a knock at the door, Buffy whipped her legs off the desk and put her best 'professional' expression on her face.  "Come in," she called. 

            She saw the child first, a little girl of no more than three years old with thick and slightly wavy brown hair, so dark it was almost black, dark eyelashes, pale skin, and piercingly light blue eyes. 

            Buffy knelt down to the child's level.  "I'm Buffy Summers," she said.  "The kids here call me Miss Buffy."

            "No," the little girl said firmly.

            Buffy looked at her, surprised.  "No what?" she asked.

            "No you," the child replied stubbornly.

            "Kaya," the mother said softly.  "She doesn't like strangers," she explained.  Buffy stood up and turned her smile in the woman's direction.  

            "Hello, B," the woman said, putting a protective hand on her daughter's head.   

            "Faith," Buffy said, shock in her eyes and the smile frozen on her face.

            "Buffy," Faith returned, not knowing how to begin.

            "Kaya," the little girl said firmly, pointing to her chest and stating her name in the silence that followed.  Then, tilting her head to the side, she grinned.  "Spike," she said finally.

            Buffy stared at the child.  "What did she say?" she asked Faith.

            "That's why I'm here," Faith replied.  

TBC (possibly)… hopefully this will cure my insomnia.  Whether or not I'll continue, I don't know.  Let me know what you think and if you'd like to read more.  If I do continue, we'll get to know Kaya, who's very much her mother's daughter, and we'll see more of all of the other children, plus an eventual crossover with AtS and guest appearances from additional Buffy characters, past and present.  

PLEASE REVIEW!     


	2. The Power of Graham Crackers

DISCLAIMER: I own Kaya and the other kiddos.  All others are property of Joss Whedon et al.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Like I said last time, this was a late night effort, and I'm not sure how long my muse will carry me on it, but if you all will keep reading, I'll do my best to keep writing.  Here's a quick kid index, with the kiddos' names, ages, and powers from last chapter, just so you all don't get too confused.

**Brandon**, 4.5 (the broody one who doesn't like girls)- a male witch.

**Val**, 4 (the quiet one, Willow's favorite)- a witch.

**Claire**, 4 (the loud one) slayer

**Noelle**, 4 (the one who loves weapons)- slayer

**Drew**, 3 ("no biting")- the werewolf

**Geyton**, 3 (the one who almost got bit)- little vampire hybrid

**Talla**** and Mara, 3 ("the twins") – twin witches**

**Brookie**, 2 (the hyper one)- slayer

**Kaya**, 3, Faith's daughter- ability to communicate with the dead

Don't worry about all of the characters… most of the kids won't be used in every chapter, so be sure to let me know who you like the best so I can give them more screen time!

As for Kaya's dad, you all are right that it's not Wood… you'll just have to wait and see.

SMALL PACKAGES: Chapter Two

            Buffy stared at Kaya.  The little girl never met her eyes.  Instead, she looked over Buffy's shoulder, her serious expression melting into a soft, baby smile.  For some reason, the innocence in the smile made Buffy take a step back.  The child had Faith's smile, but there was an aura about her that Faith had never had.

            Faith noticed Buffy's expression and grinned wryly.  "She looks like me," Faith said, shrugging and trying to keep her voice from becoming too defensive.  She took a deep breath.  "She's the best thing that ever happened to me," she said softly, stroking the little girl's hair with her left hand.

            "Long time, no see, pet," Kaya said to Buffy in a surprisingly good imitation of a British accent.

            Buffy sat down at her desk, trying to push back the roaring in her ears.  What was going on here?

            Not liking the way Buffy was looking at her daughter, Faith leaned down and easily swept the little girl into her arms, loving the feeling of holding the child.  Never taking her eyes off of the spot just over Buffy's shoulder, Kaya snuggled against her mother.

            "Hungry, Mommy," she said simply.

            Faith pressed a gentle kiss to the top of her forehead.  "We'll get you some food," she promised.  Then she turned to Buffy.  "Got any food around here, B?" she asked.

            Buffy nodded.  "We're a pretty graham crackery place," she said, dying to ask Faith what was going on, but not about to deny a hungry toddler some food.  "We can take Kaya in to the others.  It's about snack time, anyway."  Buffy gave Faith a meaningful look.  "Then you and I can talk."

            Faith held Kaya a little closer, feeling the little girl's heartbeat next to her chest.  Kaya squirmed to be let down, and after a moment, Faith set her down, and the two of them followed Buffy into the main room.

            "Bye bye, Spike," Kaya said, waving.

            "Bye bye?" Buffy asked, alarmed.  "No bye bye." Buff tried to ignore the fact that she sounded like a little kid saying goodbye to her mommy.

            Kaya looked up at her, giving the slayer an annoyed look.  "No you," she said.

            "Kaya," Faith said softly.  "Play nice with B."

             "We no play nice," Kaya said, giving her mother a wicked grin.  "Kaya only play nice with Mommy.  And _others."  _Buffy could tell by the way the little girl said it that she wasn't referring to other living people.  What exactly did that little girl see?

            Buffy walked toward the nap room, and about halfway down the hallway, she could hear the joyful screams and giggles of the kids.

            "Naptime," she said wryly.

            Faith arched one eyebrow as she, Buffy, and Kaya walked into the room.  Naptime indeed, she thought.

            A quick head count told Faith that there were nine children other than Kaya in the room, and she quickly recognized Willow, holding a little girl's hand, and Xander, being bombarded by the other eight kids at once.

            "Miss Buffy," a little girl with honey blonde hair said, her eyes lighting up.  Instantly, she stopped pummeling Xander, and after shooting a warning look at a little boy with a broody expression on his face, Noelle ran over to Buffy's side.

            "Fun with weapons," she demanded.  The hem of her dress had already been torn completely off.  Buffy groaned inwardly.  The last thing she wanted was another afternoon chat with Noelle's mother about Noelle ruining her clothes every day.

              "I don't want to play with weapons," Brandon said sullenly.  "Neither do Drew or Geyton.  We want to do _boy_ things."

            Hearing Drew's name, Buffy looked around for the little werewolf.  He had a tendency to bite things.  Buffy heaved a sigh of relief when she saw that Xander had Drew tucked safely under one arm, easily out of biting reach.  Drew grinned charmingly at her and waved.

            Buffy couldn't help but grin back.  She loved her job.

            "Quite a zoo," Faith commented under her breath.

            "A ZOO," Claire boomed.  Kaya looked at the loud girl for a moment, then she turned to her mother.

            "No her," she said softly.

            "Play nice," Faith said again.  Moving slowly but not cautiously, Kaya inched forward toward the group, her face blank for a moment.  She walked up to Willow, looked at the silent Val for a moment, and Kaya's little pink lips settled into a soft smile.

            Seeing Faith, Willow was taken aback for a moment, but moving on instinct, she knelt down next to the child.  "Hi," the wicca said awkwardly.  "I'm Willow."

            "Heya, Red," Kaya said simply, shooting the older woman an adorable smile for just an instant before she turned her attention back to Val.

            "You," she said simply, reaching out and softly touching Val's shoulder.

            Val opened her mouth, but no words came out.  Sometimes, it was very hard for her to talk, even when she really wanted to, even to younger kids.

            "Will, could you and Xander feed the kids a snack and watch Kaya while Faith and I talk?" Buffy asked, a note of urgency in her voice.

            Willow nodded, looking between Faith and the child standing in front of her, her mind reeling.  "Sure," she said.  "We can make big with the snacking."

            "SNACK!" Claire boomed.

            Buffy and Faith walked back to her office.  Kaya stared after her mother as she left but didn't say anything to stop her.  She knew Mommy would be back.  Mommy always came back for Kaya.  Mommy loved Kaya.

            After getting the kids situated in a circle, Willow sent Xander to fetch the graham crackers.

            "Who are you?" Claire asked Kaya curiously, her voice only mildly louder than was civil.

            "Do you have a crossbow?" Noelle asked, as if Kaya might be hiding a crossbow in her tiny jeans.

            "Kaya," the little girl said firmly.

            It took Willow a moment to realize that was the child's name.  "This is Kaya," she told the kids, feeling a little awkward for repeating what the dark haired child had just said.

            "What is she?" Brandon asked curiously, before remembering that he wasn't interested in Kaya, because she was very obviously female.  Still, when the child looked at him, he had to look back.

            "Is she one of them?" Brandon asked, gesturing toward Noelle, Claire, and Brookie.  Two year old Brookie, a platinum blonde with dark brown eyes, stuck her tongue out at Brandon.  Disaster was averted only because Xander arrived with the graham crackers just in the nick of time.

            Willow looked at Kaya, wondering if the child had inherited any of her mother's slaying powers.  

            Why had Faith brought her here?

            "Talkage," Buffy said firmly as she and Faith reentered her office.  "Spill, Faith."

            Faith sat down in a chair next to Buffy's desk, putting her feet up on the slayer's desk, right on top of some of Buffy's papers.  

            "She's not like other kids," Faith said finally, looking out the window.  She took a deep and ragged breath.  "She sees things, people.  Are they ghosts?  Her imagination?  I don't know, B, but she knows things she shouldn't know."  

            Faith said nothing for a moment, and then she continued, still not looking directly at Buffy.  "She's tough," she said.  "She never cries, but she likes to sleep with a light on at night time.  She's survived vamp attacks without flinching, but she still sucks her thumb."  Faith's voice was low and reflective.  "She's sweet and fierce, and she calls me Mommy."  Faith's voice broke for a moment, and Buffy was floored by the amount of emotion on the woman's face.

            "She loves me," Faith said simply.  "And I'd do anything, kill anyone for her."  Suddenly realizing that she'd gone off topic, Faith returned to the issue at hand.  "I saw Giles," she said, so softly Buffy almost couldn't hear her.  "A couple of months ago, in a Chicago airport, and he told me about you guys, about what you were doing here.  He saw Kaya.  He didn't know about the things she sees, but he told me to come here anyway, that Kaya might be a slayer because I'm a slayer.  He said you guys had a way to identify gifted students."

            Faith looked down at her hands and shook her head wryly.  "He calls them gifted," she said.  "Is that what we are, B?  Gifted?  I don't feel like this has been much of a gift, you know?"  

            Feeling the connection to Faith, the only other person alive who had felt the burden, the loneliness of being a slayer in the days before all Potentials had become slayers, Buffy stepped forward and put her hand on the woman's shoulder.  To her surprise, Faith didn't turn away.  Instead, she put her own hand on top of Buffy's.

            "I need to know, Buffy," Faith said, her voice showing none of the vulnerability she felt.  "I need to know what Kaya's seeing, what it means."

            Buffy didn't say anything for a moment, and then she spoke.  "We'll find out," she said.  "I'll talk to Willow about a gift divination spell, and I'll email Dawn and see if she can do some hunting for a prophesy of some sort.  There's always a prophesy."  Buffy smiled.  "Dawn's a linguistics major at UCLA now, concentrating on ancient languages.  She always did have a thing for Sumerian."

            Buffy realized she was rambling, and that Faith still held her hand.  "We'll find out what we need to know," Buffy said.  "Kaya will be fine."

            Faith turned to meet Buffy's eyes.  "She has to be fine," Faith said.  "She's all I've got."  The dark slayer paused for a minute.  "I love her, B," she said finally.

            Buffy realized it was the first time she'd ever heard Faith say the word love.  The child had changed her, or maybe Kaya's existence was forcing her to look at Faith through new eyes.

            Either way, things were changing.

            "Chinese battle star!" Noelle said joyfully, expertly flinging a gram cracker across the room at Geyton with a quick flick of her wrist.

            "Noelle!" Willow and Xander said at once.  She turned darkly fringed innocent eyes on them and batted her eyelashes.

            "What?" she asked sweetly.

            Geyton, shrugging, picked up the graham cracker and ate it with a grin.  For a child with vampiric qualities, he was surprisingly laid back.

            Kaya, sitting in between Drew and Val, watched the interaction with interest.  With a mischievous glint in his eyes, Drew leaned over and tried to take one of Kaya's graham crackers.

            Thwack.  Kaya's little hand pinned Drew's to the ground.  She narrowed her eyes at him, looking more like Faith than ever.

            "Mine," she said softly.

            Drew made a ridiculous face, and after a tense moment, Kaya giggled a very childlike giggle.  "Funny," she said, pointing at Drew.

            Drew smiled at her, and his smile only faded when he was pelted with a graham cracker from Claire's general direction.  Whatever Noelle did, Claire did too.  Jumping to her new friend's defense, Kaya leapt through the air and tackled Claire to the ground.  

            "HEY!" Claire screeched a moment later.  "She bit me!"

            Drew grinned broadly at Kaya.  He liked the new girl.  He liked her a lot.  

            Intervening, Xander lifted Kaya off of Claire and gave her what passed for a Xanderized firm look.

            "No biting," he said firmly, and all of the students echoed him.

            "That's our number one rule," Geyton said, "cause I'm a vamp and Drew's a wolfie."

            Xander sat down and held Kaya firmly in his lap.  "If you can't play nicely," he said, "you'll have to sit with me."

            Kaya was silent for a moment, and then she spoke.  "Anya," she said clearly.  

            Xander stared at her.  "What did you say?" he asked her.

            "Graham cracker is a good aphro… aphro…" Kaya struggled with the word she was trying to say.  She tilted her head to the side, as if listening.  "Aphrodisiac," she said finally, beaming up at someone no one else could see.

            Xander looked down at the little girl.  "Now that's just freaky," he said.

            Noelle tugged on his shirt sleeve.  "Weapons?" she asked sweetly.  "Please, Uncle Xander?"

            Xander nodded, standing up, Kaya still held firmly in his arms.  He wanted to talk to Buffy.  He wanted to know what was going on with Faith's daughter.

            "Okay, everyone ready for weapons?" Xander asked.

            "Wah-taaaaaaaaah!" Drew said, striking a ridiculous karate pose.

            Kaya grinned at him.

            Brandon grinned at him, forgetting for the moment about brooding, even if he was going to have to play a girl's game.  He kind of liked the new kid, even if she was a girl, because she'd bitten Claire.  In Brandon's sage opinion, Claire needed to be bitten at least once a day, possibly more often.

            "We want the crossbow," both of the twins said at once.

            "Boing boing boing boing beeeeee-oing!" Brookie, the youngest potential, yelled, bouncing on one leg around the room.  There was a very good reason they normally tried to limit Brookie's sugar in take. "Boing!"

            Willow, Val stuck close to her side, exchanged a grin with Xander.  Potential Preschool was in chaos, and that was exactly the way they liked it.

TBC… I know there are lots of new names and kiddos right now, and I'll try to narrow it down a bit as it goes.  I hope you guys aren't too confused and that you're still liking it.  Next up, fun with weapons time, we meet the kiddos' families and some familiar faces there, and the mystery surrounding Kaya, and an ancient prophesy, are unveiled.

PLEASE REVIEW!!!  (Let me know which of the kiddos you like best, please)


	3. Ohhhh Shiny

DISCLAIMER: I own Kaya and the rest of the kiddos.  All others and the general mythos are the property of Joss Whedon et al.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:  Everyone seems pretty evenly split on most of the kiddos, with Val and Drew being the most common favorites and the twins flying completely below radar because I don't really like them that much… so, I guess I'll be keeping all of the kiddos around for awhile, and I'll try to do bits with each of them as long as you guys are interested.

SMALL PACKAGES: Chapter Three

            Standing at Willow's side, Val watched silently as Noelle, Claire, and the twins joyfully ran toward the weapons.  Val wasn't much of a weapons girl herself.  Watching with wide eyes, she lifted her hand to her mouth and sucked softly on a couple of her fingers.  Absentmindedly, Willow stroked the child's brown hair, and Val inched a little closer towards her.

            Brandon had rallied the rest of the boys around him and was currently shooting dirty looks at the weapons.  He didn't understand why boys had to have weapons time, too.  They weren't slayers, and they certainly weren't girls.

            Once Xander had sat her down, with one last admonition not to bite anyone, Kaya walked deliberately toward the boys.  

            Xander tried not to, but he couldn't help but think that Kaya was her mother's daughter.

            Brandon looked at her suspiciously.  She'd bitten Claire, which was a good thing, but she was definitely a girl, which wasn't.

            Kaya stared back at Brandon.  "Boy," she addressed him, not bothering to learn his name.  She pointed to herself.  "Kaya."  Then she narrowed her eyes at him.  "Here now," she said, daring him to challenge her.  Brandon, with all of the dignity of his four and a half years, when faced with the tiny three year old girl, fierceness clear in every fiber of her being, wisely chose not to argue.

            "Sure," Geyton said, willing, as always, to go with the flow.  "You can play weapons with us, Kaya."

            "Weapons are for girls," Brandon reminded him.

            "She is a girl," Drew pointed out.  "And she bit Claire."  Drew thought for a moment and turned his attention back to Kaya.  "How did she taste?"

            Kaya wrinkled her nose a little.

            "Told you so," Drew said, turning to Geyton.

            Geyton shrugged.  He thought that Claire looked like she'd taste okay, kind of like cotton candy.  Oh well, he thought.  

            "Okay, kiddos," Xander said loudly, trying to talk over the small roar of the room.  "Today, we're going to talk about battle strategy."

            "Sharp things," Noelle said, her eyes dancing.  

            "POINTY THINGS!" Claire yelled joyously.

            Xander looked at Willow, and after she motioned a little with her head, her eyes opening wider and a smile settling over her lips, he changed plans.  "Today," he said, "we're going to talk about pointy things."

            "Pointy pointy pointy pointy," Brookie sang, bouncing across the room, twirling in circles.  "Pointy things for Brookie!"

            Xander tried not to shudder at the idea of the hyper two year old with pointy things.  

            Seeing that Claire, Noelle, and the twins were already more than Xander could easily handle, Willow stepped in and crouched down to Brookie's level.  "How about we get you some Holy Water?" she asked, making her voice sound very excited.

            Brookie tilted her head to the side.  She wasn't so sure what she thought about that.  "Pointy things?" she asked, her voice bordering on a whimper.  She hadn't really had a nap today, due to Xander's napcapades, and her lower lip trembled just a little.  She sniffed and pointed to the older girls.  "Pointy things," she said.

            "Don't cry, Brookie," a soft voice said, and Val came to stand beside the little girl.  Willow smiled at the child.  As quiet and painfully shy as she was, Val was tender hearted, and couldn't stand to see anyone else in pain, even if it meant speaking up.  "I'll play with Holy Water with you.  I can make it shiny.  You like shiny things, right?"

            Brookie beamed at Val, and Willow was eternally grateful to the motherly little girl.  

            Across the room, Drew was staring at Kaya.  "Whatcha lookin' at?" he asked, wondering if Kaya was planning to bite anything.

            "Her," Kaya said simply, her eyes fixed on Willow, Val, and Brookie.

            "Which her?" Brandon asked, somewhat disgruntled.  "There are lots of hers here."

            "They miss them," Kaya said cryptically.  "Where tweed man?"  The change of subject seemed natural coming out of the little girl's mouth.

            Drew knew immediately who she was talking about and set off on a ridiculous Giles impression right away.

            "Watch me clean my glasses," he said.  "Talk funny."  His British accent was unquestionably horrid.

            Kaya giggled.  "Silly," she said out loud.  

            Drew posed for another moment, Brandon sighed, and recognizing the light in the little werewolf's eye, he stepped back.  Drew was getting ready to go into wrestling mode.  Like any small puppy, Drew loved to play physically, romping with whoever was handy with very little forewarning.  Usually, it was Geyton.  

            Sensing a fight coming, Geyton grinned lazily.  He didn't have any bad feelings toward Drew, but wrestling was fun.

            "Grrrrrr," the little boy growled in a high pitched, baby growl.

            Kaya looked at him, startled for a moment, before turning her attention back to Drew.

            "Wah-tahhhhhh," Drew yelled, launching himself at Geyton.

            "Hiiiiiii-yah!" Geyton returned, joyfully wrestling with the werewolf, his little face vamping.

            Kaya looked around, an evil grin on her little face.  Brandon wasn't sure how much he liked that look.

            "Wah-tahhhhhhh!" Faith's daughter yelled in a very good Drew impression before tackling the older boy, giggling as she did.  She was definitely her mother's daughter.

            Willow, seeing that Val had Brookie's full attention, tried to intervene, but she just got sucked into the wrestling match herself.  Somehow, fun with weapons time always ended up like this.

            "No fair," Noelle said, seeing the brawl.  "I didn't know we were playing spar!"

            "SPAR!" Claire yelled as a war cry, and the two little slayers launched themselves into action.

            "Willow doesn't want to wrestle," Willow said, trying to put on her resolve face.  "There will be no wrestling, no little wrestling outfits, no WWF style fighting."

            Brookie's eyes wandered to the fight.  Thinking on her feet, Val muttered a few words of an incantation, and the holy water turned hot pink and glittery.

            "Ohhhhhhhh," Brookie said.  "Pretty."

            Sighing, Xander ran after Noelle and Claire, but along the way, he saw the magicked Holy Water and got distracted.  He tilted his head to the side.  "Ohhhhh," he said.  "Pretty."

            In the middle of the ruckus, Kaya tickled Brandon, and the older boy laughed despite of himself.

            "Coming, coming, coming," Kaya said in a sing song voice.

            No one heard her.

            "Who else has she spoken to?" Buffy asked, not wanting to force Faith to think about something that was obviously painful for her, but not able to resist asking.

            Faith sighed.  "People I don't know," she said.  "One of our neighbors in Seattle had a little girl who died right before we moved in."  Faith sighed.  "Her name was Sunny.  I thought she was an imaginary friend."

            Buffy grinned softly despite herself.  The words seemed so odd coming out of Faith's mouth.

            "Hey, don't laugh, B," Faith said, somewhat offended.  "I had an imaginary friend, and it's not like I thought that Kaya was any different from normal kids."  Faith's voice dropped again, and Buffy saw that Kaya's difference was killing her.  "I just don't want it to be hard for her, B," she said.

            Buffy looked at Faith.  The dark slayer seemed so open, so honest, and yet, there seemed to be something that she wasn't telling her.

            "Who else has she seen Faith?" Buffy asked.

            "Spike," Faith said softly, "but you already knew that.  Anya sometimes, too, and there are others.  Sunny."  Fury came onto Faith's face.  "And Angelus."

            For a moment, Buffy's heart stopped beating.  "What?" she asked roughly.

            "She'll scream," Faith said.  "Blood curdling screams, like she's being cut to shreds, and the look in her eyes…" Faith trailed off and then slammed her hand onto the chair leg, breaking it.  "That look shouldn't ever be in her eyes."

            Looking at Faith, Buffy knew that the look in the younger slayer's eyes was the exact look Faith had seen in Kaya's.

            "They protect her," Faith said softly, "the others."

            Buffy looked at her.  "You don't sound so unsure anymore," she said shrewdly.  "I thought you didn't know whether or not Kaya just had a big imagination, what exactly it was she saw."

            "I wish I didn't know," Faith said.  "I wanted you to tell me I was wrong."  Faith paused for a moment.  "But, B, I'm not wrong."

            "Then why come here?" Buffy asked.

            "Because I need help," Faith said, and Buffy knew it wasn't easy for her to say.  "Because you guys do the prophesy thing.  You do the saving the world thing.  That was never my bag.  You know that."

            Buffy said nothing.

            Faith sighed.  "I think the world is gonna need some saving," Faith said finally.  "Because I know my daughter, and I know that something's happening.  Me, I don't care too much about the world.  I care about Kaya.  I love Kaya, and I don't know if I can protect her on my own.  I don't know what's coming, B, but we'd better find out, and soon."

            Buffy nodded, the name Angelus still ringing in her ears.  Looking at Faith, she got the distinct impression that the not-caring-about-the-world thing was an act.  There was a difference in Faith.  She'd thawed.  Something had cracked.  

            "I already called Dawn on the prophesy front," Buffy said, even though Faith had watched her make the call.  "I think I'd better call Giles, too."  Buffy paused for a moment.  "I guess we don't need the gift divination spell," she said under her breath.

            "We might," Faith said.  She looked off.  "See," she said slowly.  "The thing is, I don't know exactly what else Kaya can do."

            "There's more?" Buffy asked.

            Faith shrugged.  "There might be," she allowed.  "I'm a slayer."

            "And her father?" Buffy asked, cursing herself when Faith took the question as blow.

            "Kaya doesn't have a father," Faith said.  "At least not one I can remember."

            Buffy stared at her.

            "Damn comas," Faith muttered.  "The second one isn't nearly so much fun as the first."

            Outside the school, they spread out.  They had their assignments, knew which children they were to take.

            They needed three, and the school had been so kind in rounding up the innocents for slaughter.  It would be a neat and tidy kidnapping.  

            The underground division of Wolfram and Hart liked things neat and tidy.

            _Spike chuckled.  "Little chit has spirit," he said, nodding his head toward Kaya, who had __Brandon__ pinned firmly to the ground._

_            "And impressive stamina," Anya said, her eyes stuck on Xander.  He was so close she could have touched him, but they were separated by a plane.  Damn plane._

_            Spike chucked Anya under the chin and longed for a cigarette.  "We aren't here for that," he said.  "We're here to protect the little halfbit over there.  Bad things coming."_

_            Anya wriggled her fingers at Spike, her voice cheerfully sarcastic.  "Ooooo," she said.  "Bad things. I'll tell you what's bad, Mr. Big Not Bad, and that's the stark lack of ghost currency.  It's appalling."_

_            Spike looked toward Buffy's office, longing for Kaya to return to the blonde slayer, so that he could look at her, smell her.  _

_            "Bloody hell," he muttered._

"Bloody hell," Kaya said cheerfully, repeating the word she'd heard one of her _others_ say.

            "Bloody bloody bloody," Drew echoed.

            "Hell hell hell," Geyton said compliantly.

            All three of them burst into laughter and stopped wrestling.  

            "Bloody hell, bloody hell, bloody hell," Brookie said from across the room, no longer entranced by the sparkly Holy Water.  She bounced up and down and wriggled her bottom.

            "And that," Xander said out loud, "is the oddest rendition of the snoopy dance I have ever seen."

TBC… I'm trying to move the plot along without short changing any of the kiddos on the fluff area.  It's really late. I'm falling asleep at the keyboard, but y'all were good about reviewing, so I wanted to update.

PLEASE REVIEW

And don't worry, next chapter, you see some of the kiddos parents, and we start crossing over with Angel, as well as some more former Buff characters.


	4. Just a little sporkie for Brookie

DISCLAIMER: I own Kaya, Drew, Geyton, Noelle, Claire, Val, Brandon, Brookie, and anyone else you don't recognize.  Joss owns everyone related to BtVS and AtS.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I'm trying to do the best I can with updates.  It's hard, but if you guys keep reading and let me know what you think, I'll keep writing.  

You'll get to see some of the kids' parents in this chapter, though very few of the kids are related to anyone major in the Buffyverse.  I don't like writing fics that pretend that five years from now, all of the Buffyverse people will have kids, so you'll see a lot of incredible coincidences involving more minor characters, but you won't see the Scoobies running around with kids.  Likewise, none of the main players in AI will have kids either.  No little Angels, no Gunn kids, no Wes kids, etc.  Still, there will be a few coincidences that might make you all raise your eyebrows a bit… I like to see it as the influence of the Powers that Be on the lives of their champions… 

And to the person who asked me a question regarding Val, email me.

Anyway, hope you enjoy.

SMALL PACKAGES: CHAPTER FOUR

            "Second coma?" Buffy asked, shooting Faith an incredulous look.

            Faith slumped into her chair a little, meeting Buffy's gaze directly.  "You know, B," she said.  "It's a long story."

            Buffy stared at her for a second.

            "I was in another coma," Faith said simply, shrugging.

            "Shockingly not long story," Buffy said.

            "So it would appear," Faith replied, a lazy, wry tone in her voice.  She sighed after a moment.  "After Sunnydale, I was with Robin for a while."  Faith averted her eyes a bit.  "Guess I don't need to say that I screwed that one up."  She paused for a moment.  "That's what I do, right?"  Her voice was casual and laced with acceptance rather than bitterness.

            Buffy opened her mouth, wanting to say something, and a small sound came out.  "Faith," she said.

            Faith cut her off with a small shake of her head, and the dark slayer continued her story.  "I just bounced around for a while, slaying vamps.  Killing things, but it wasn't the same, B.  More and more of them were coming."

            Buffy knew that she wasn't talking about vamps.

            "Slayers?" she asked.  She'd experienced the same thing: going out to slay, and finding a slayer already there.  The ability was an incredible part of who she was, but the need of the world wasn't the same anymore.  It was exactly what Buffy had wanted, exactly what Faith had feared.

            "Then one night, I'm staking out a club," Faith said, and Buffy quelled the insane urge to giggle at the lame pun she read into Faith's words.

            "I'd already dusted a couple of vamps, and I went inside to grab a drink."  Faith ran out of words then, thinking about the way she'd felt then, moving further and further away from reality, into darkness toward the light.

            "Uh… Faith?" Buffy's words brought Faith back to this world.  "Earth to Faith."  Faith turned to look at her.  "Major zone out-age," Buffy told her.

            Faith nodded.  She swallowed and then spoke.  "I woke up eight months later," Faith said.  "Eight months pregnant."

"No.  More.  Wrestling."  Willow's voice was firm, but all of the kids could hear the smile in her voice.

            Drew, ignoring the hold Geyton had on his right foot and the way Kaya was sitting on top of his body, grinned charmingly up at Willow.  Holding his index finger close to his thumb, leaving a tiny space in between, he asked, "A little wrestling?"

            Willow held her fingers a little bit apart, mimicking his action and grinned goofily for a moment.  Seeing that Val was losing her hold over Brookie, she shook her head firmly and put on her resolve face.  "No wrestling," she said.  The idea of Brookie wrestling was very scary.  

            Brookie danced toward the group.  "Spar, spar, spar!" she sang loudly.  "Brookie spar.  Brookie spar with pointy things."

            Instantly, everyone's attention was on Brookie.

            Willow breathed a sigh of relief to see that there were no pointy things in Brookie's hands.

            Brandon rolled his eyes and looked at the clock on the wall.  "It's almost time to go home," he announced importantly.  He was the only one of the children, besides Val, who seldom spoke, who could read clocks.  

            Xander squinted at the clock and tilted his head slightly to the side.  "We seriously need one of the clocks with numbers," Xander said.

            "A digital clock?" Willow asked.  "Good old Mr. Clock-with-minute-and-hour-hands is just fine with me."

            Xander held his index finger a little bit above his thumb.  "Just a little?" he asked, echoing Drew's words from earlier.

            Willow broke into a smile, and in one very practiced movement, she pulled Geyton and Drew apart and swept Kaya easily into her arms.

            "How about a singalong before we go," Xander suggested, shooting a wicked look at Willow.  Willow glared at him good naturedly.

            "Is Miss Willow gonna sing, Uncle Xander?" Noelle asked, wide eyed. 

            Xander grinned at Willow.  He held his index finger about a centimeter from his thumn. "Just a little," he told the kids.

            The kids turned their attention to Willow.  Miss Willow never sang during singalongs.  Willow's skin had turned pale at the very thought of singing for an audience, even an audience as young and forgiving as the kids of Potential Preschool.  

            "I'll sing," Claire volunteered.  Xander shuddered.  Singing was not one of Claire's talents.  

            "I know a good song," Noelle said, cutting Claire off.

            Her formerly pristine dress completely in shreds, Noelle started singing.  "Mary had a little glaive, little glaive, little glaive…"

            Claire picked up the song right away.  "MARY HAD A LITTLE GLAIVE WHOSE FLEECE WAS WHITE AS SNOW!"

            Brandon rolled his eyes.  "Glaives aren't white," he said.

            "Shiny," Brookie said.  She beamed.  "Shiiiiiiinnnnnnnyyyyyyyy!"

            Kaya, still in Willow's arms, tilted her head to the side pensively, a very Faithlike expression settling over her face.

            _"Lots of things are shiny," Anya said absentmindedly.  "I find shiny things to be sexually arousing."  She played with the ends of her hair, her eyes still locked on Xander's._

_            "That a fact?" Spike asked, arching one eyebrow._

_            "Like paper clips," Anya said, a down to earth quality clear in her voice.  "Or forks."_

_            Spike said nothing.  His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly as he sensed the men on the perimeters of the school moving in.  He stepped closer to Kaya, ready to do whatever he could to protect her.  He may have been non-corporeal, but he was still a bad ass._

_            Without thinking about it, he stroked the little girl's hair protectively.  He and Anya had been with the little halfbit since the day she was born._

_            "Bad things coming," he said under his breath.  Those men weren't getting near the little one.  He wouldn't let them._

_            "Like sporks," Anya said, continuing down her long list of shiny turn ons._

"Bad things coming," Kaya whispered.  "Like sporks."

            Willow and Xander turned to look at her.

            "Now that's just a little bit freaky," Xander said.  "And cryptic.  What's so bad about sporks?  I mean sure, the half spooniness half forkiness of them is freaky, but as far as utensils go, I've never seen them as the most malevolent."

            Willow nodded.

            "What's a spork?" Drew asked, liking the sound of the word.  "Spork-spork."  With a grin, he bared his teeth at Geyton, who growled playfully back.

            "No biting," the adults chorused.

            "Shiny?" Brookie asked.  "Shiny Sporkie?  Shiny Sporkie for Brookie?"

            Without a word, Val walked up to Willow and looked up at the child in her arms.  Kaya wiggled to get down.

            "What do you see?" Val asked.

            Kaya looked at Val.  "You," she replied casually, waiting a moment before giggling.  

            "What else?" Val asked softly, sensing there was something more here.

            "Others," Kaya said.  "My friends.  Like Sunny."

            "Sunny?" Brandon asked, despite himself.

            "Maybe it's her 'maginary friend," Noelle said.  "I had one of those."

            Brandon scoffed, brooded, and deliberately didn't think about the fact that, once upon a time, he'd had an imaginary friend.  An imaginary tiger friend wasn't the same thing.  It was less girly.  Mr. Big Paws hadn't been girly at all.  His mom had said so, and Brandon's mom knew everything.  His mom wasn't a girl.  Not at all.

            "He had a sword," Noelle continued dreamily, talking about her imaginary friend.

            "No," Kaya said loudly, stubbornly, wrapping her arms around her chest and wriggling to get out of Willow's arms.  "Sunny was real."  She looked at the ground.  "Sunny went away.  She told me she'd take care of Sunny, but Sunny went away."

            "Who told you she'd take care of Sunny?" Xander asked, wondering if the she in question could be Anya.

            Kaya met his eyes.  "Darla," she said.

            Silence fell over the room.

            "Damn," Kaya said, filling the void cheerfully with a word she knew she wasn't supposed to say.  Sometimes Kaya liked to be just a little bit bad.  

            "Kaya Joyce." Faith said sharply, coming into the room with Buffy on her heels.  Kaya looked sheepishly up at her mother.

            "Hi Mommy," she said.  The little girl looked at Buffy.  "Hi you," she said.  Buffy wondered if she'd ever get a name from the child.  Thus far, she'd spent all morning as 'you.'

            "Mommy doesn't want you to say those words, baby," Faith said firmly, catching the little girl in her arms when Kaya flung herself at her mother.  She gave the child a hard look, and Kaya looked down at the ground for a moment.

            "Kaya love Mommy," Kaya said, half in apology, half in glee, snuggling into Faith's arms.

            "Mommy loves Kaya," Faith replied, holding the girl close and feeling her heartbeat.

            Willow, Buffy, and Xander watched with awkward awe at the interaction between Faith and her daughter.  

            "Claire-Claire," Brookie said, bouncing over to the older girl.  "When Daddy get here?"

            Claire looked down at the smaller girl.  The two girls looked so little alike, Claire with her dark hair and hazel eyes and Brookie with wild honey blonde hair, cut in a short pixie style and sticking out all over, that the staff continually forgot that the two were related.

            "Daddy will be here soon, Brookie," Claire said with the air of an older sister.  

            A moment later, a dark haired man stuck his head into the room.  

            "DADDY!" Both girls greeted him at the top of their lungs.

            Brandon shuddered and slapped his hands over his ears.

            "Miss Willow," Val said softly.  "I think Drew and Geyton are gonna eat each other."

            "No biting," everyone in the room except for Lindsey, who was a bit out of the loop, and Geyton and Drew, who each had their mouths full with the other's foot, said at once.

            Buffy sent a bright smile at the girls' father.  "Hey there, Mr. McDonald," she said, trying to seem like a got-it-together preschool teacher.  "It's been a little bit of a crazy day around here, today.  We had finger painting this morning, and the kids are still a little wired up."

            "Educational finger painting," Willow said, emphasizing her words with a nod.

            "With numbers and letters and… Cheetohs," Xander said, trying to sound official.  The three of them spent a great deal of time convincing the parents of Potential's student of the validness of the curriculum.  

            "Cheetohs?" Willow mouthed.   Xander shrugged.

            "We played Weapons!" Claire told her father candidly.

            "No weapons for Brookie," Brookie said, her lower lip jutting out in memory.

            Lindsey smiled at the poor pre-school teachers, a wry but good natured grin.  "Educational weapons play," he said with a straight face.

            "Yup," Willow said.

            "Of course," Buffy said.

            "Spork," Drew added thoughtfully, having obediently removed Geyton's foot from his mouth.

            "SPORK!" Claire yelled.

            "Sporkie-sporkie-sporkie," Brookie sang.

            Lindsey grinned.  His girls were something else.

            Kaya followed Spike's gaze out the window.  "Bad things coming," she said.

            Lindsey saw the new child and looked at her with interest.  Ever since he'd seen his younger sister's children, living a neglected existence in extreme poverty, and ever since he'd found out they were slayers and adopted them as his own, he'd developed an incredible interest in children of all kinds, especially the children who attended Potential.  Special children.

            The new child had dark hair, and there was something very familiar about her.  When Lindsey saw the woman holding the girl, he didn't so much as blink, despite the surprise he felt keenly in his stomach.

            "Faith," he said smoothly.

            Faith narrowed her eyes at him in memory, but seeing the way the two little girls were beaming up at him, she couldn't help but soften a little.  Kaya had changed her life; Faith figured that with children, anything was possible.

            Outside, the demon and men who made up the acquisitions department of the sub-surface division of Wolfram and Hart watched quietly.

            They needed three girls.  Slayers.  Their blood ties to the company had forced the men to these three.  

            A sacrifice was needed.  The cause was worthy.  There was money involved, of course, and power.

            There was little these men, these monsters wouldn't sacrifice for the ability to channel the powers of the dead.

TBC… next up, some action, and you'll see a few more familiar faces (one from Buffy seasons one and three, and one from Angel season one… are ya curious yet?)… more on Sunny, what Kaya sees, and what exactly is going on in LA, plus some more of those we know and love on the other side of life, more about Kaya's birth, and some quality time with Kaya, Geyton, Val, Drew, Brandon, Claire, Noelle, and Brookie…  

Oh, and if you have time, go check out lilcloudofcalm's story "Isara Rosenberg"… you'll see some great kiddos in the third chapter, and plenty of quality Anya.  You can find a link to the story in my favorite stories list.  Check it out.  It's worth the time.

PLEASE REVIEW!!!   

            


	5. I saw that

DISCLAIMER: I own Kaya, Claire, Noelle, Brookie, Val, Geyton, Drew, Brandon, and Sunny.  All others belong to Joss Whedon et al.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:  A quick update…even though a lot of people didn't review.. aren't you proud?  My muse had a little song to sing, so you all get an update.  I hope you enjoy… it will be less fluffy and more action than usual, but it must be done…

And to the person who asked, you'll get to see the logistics of Angelus being 'dead' in my world a bit later… it alllll ties together.  Just know that you're asking the questions you're supposed to be asking. 

SMALL PACKAGES: CHAPTER FIVE

            "Daddy-daddy-daddy," Brookie sang, tugging on his shirt sleeve, trying to get his attention.  Lindsey's eyes were fastened on Faith and Kaya.  Absentmindedly, he lifted Brookie into his arms and pressed a quick kiss to her temple.  Claire held tightly onto his hand, so glad to see him that she almost couldn't stand it.  Over the course of the past two years, she'd stopped worrying that he wasn't going to come to pick her up after school, stopped worrying about going back to being hungry and alone and scared with her momma.

            "Hello Faith," Lindsey said, his tone soft at the way the child in Faith's arms was staring at him.

            Kaya wiggled in her mother's arms to get down.  Faith, wanting to clutch Kaya to her, set the little girl down, squeezing her a moment before she did.

            Over in the corner, Brandon rolled his eyes at the way Lindsey was cuddling the two little girls.  When he'd first met Brookie and Claire's daddy, he'd thought that Lindsey was pretty neat. He'd even played football with them at the Potential Class Picnic, but then Lindsey had let Brookie play.

            Brandon shook his head in disgust.  Brookie was too hyper to do anything right, she was too little to know how to play, and, by far the worst of her sins, she was a girl.  Catching the boy's look out of the corner of his eye, Lindsey winked at him, and Brandon tried not to grin.

            Whether he wanted to or not, he still liked Lindsey, even if Claire, who Brandon hated-hated-hated, was Lindsey's daughter.  

            Seeing Brandon looking at her daddy, Claire glanced up at Lindsey to make sure he wasn't paying attention, and then she stuck her tongue out at Brandon and crossed her eyes.  Stupid boy.

            Willow stifled a grin.

            "I saw that," Lindsey told his daughter, half playfully.

            Faith grinned at Lindsey in appreciation.  He hadn't been looking at Claire, but in the way of parents, he had known exactly what she'd been doing.

            Brandon stuck his tongue out at Claire.  A moment later, his mother walked into the room.

            "Brandon," she said, her voice low pitched.  She succeeded in keeping the smile off of her face, but as they always did, her eyes lit up when she saw her son.  He brightened her life, little broody face and all.

            "I saw that," Kate told her son, having no idea that Lindsey had just uttered the exact same words.

            "You know," Geyton said thoughtfully, "mommies and daddies see an awful lot."

            "Like when you pretend to have a tail and chase it and accidentally knock over a lamp," Drew said.

            No one in the room commented that, at certain times of the month, Drew actually did have a tail.

            _"Hmmmm," Anya said thoughtfully.  "A tail."_

_            Spike rolled his eyes, but grinned good naturedly.  After five years together in the afterlife, he and Anya were starting to get used to each other._

_            "You could do interesting things with a tail," Anya said dreamily._

_            "You could be one of those monkeys that plays the cymbals and wears a sodding fez," Spike said, moving slightly toward the door.  A flash of light caught his attention, and he and Anya both turned to look at its source.  They saw her only for a minute, staring at them, at all of them, in silence, and they could hear the soft whimpers of a small child._

_            Instantly, Anya was standing on one side of Kaya and Spike was standing on the other.  Whatever kind of mystical attack this was, they would protect her._

_            It wasn't the first time._

"Sodding fez," Kaya said out loud, walking right up to Lindsey and putting her little hands on her hips as she looked at him.  She blinked suddenly, and rubbed her eyes, and then she stared at him for a moment.

            "Where did she go?" she asked, her voice tiny.

            "Who?" Lindsey asked, kneeling down to the ground next to her.

            "Darla," Kaya whispered.

            In unison, Faith, Buffy, Willow, and Xander groaned.

            Lindsey's mouth went dry.  "Darla?" he asked.  Kate arched an eyebrow.  She knew quite well who Lindsey McDonald was, but neither of them had mentioned their respective pasts in crossing.  She knew that he was a man who wasn't easily shaken, and, ever the cop, she could see that whatever this new child had said, had shaken him.

            Faith recognized Kate, and in that instant, she felt a wave of feelings that she'd tried to banish wash over her.  She wasn't good enough.  She was bad.  Evil.  She deserved nothing.  Less than nothing.

            Faith forced her breathing to slow, and she looked at Kaya.  No matter what she'd done wrong or who she'd hurt, Faith had managed to do one thing right in her life.  The small dark haired child was the only thing Faith had going for her, and for the millionth time, Faith realized that it was enough.  She walked over to her daughter and knelt beside her.  

            "You saw Darla again, baby?" she asked, her voice gentle, the affection she had for her daughter clear.  "Tell Mommy what you saw, Kaya."

            "Bright light," Kaya said, her eyes still locked on Lindsey.  "Then Darla.  Sunny cry.  Why Sunny cry?"

            Lindsey stared at the child.  He had a sinking feeling that he knew exactly why this little one was at Potential, and it had nothing to do with the fact that her mother was a slayer.

            Brandon watched, fascinated, as Kaya spoke.  When she was speaking, it was almost easy to forget that she was a girl.  He walked up to his mother.  She ruffled his hair, even though she knew he hated it.

            "Hey kiddo," Kate said, her eyes still half on the scene in front of her.  "How goes it?"

            Brandon thought for a minute.  "They made me play with weapons," he complained.  "And weapons are for girls."  Kate tilted her head slightly, waiting for him to continue.  She was convinced it was just a phase he was going through, and honestly, Kate didn't like girls very much herself.

            Then again, most of the time, Kate wasn't overly fond of people, except for her son.

            "Kaya bit Claire," Brandon continued.  It was clear that had been the highlight of his day.

            "Yeah," Geyton said dreamily, thinking about biting Claire, or maybe even kissing her.  She was kind of pretty.  

            "Kaya," Faith said, scolding her half-heartedly.  She was more concerned about what Kaya had just seen. These flashes, the ones that scared Kaya, were the ones that had convinced Faith to bring her daughter to Buffy in the first place.  Looking at the child, Faith knew two things.

            Faith knew that she was scared, and that if she ever met the person who'd bestowed this 'gift' on her child, she'd kill them, if they weren't already dead.

            Ready to get Lindsey's attention back, Claire nodded vigorously.  "SHE BIT ME," Claire bellowed, in typical Claire fashion, getting more fun out of saying the words than anyone else would have thought was possible.  To Claire, having been bitten was almost worth it, just to give her something to say.

            "Indoor voice," Lindsey reminded her automatically.  

            Claire spent a great deal of her life being reminded to use her indoor voice.

            "Can I go outside?" Claire asked.  "On the playground?"  Outside, no one could make Claire be quiet, because, sounding very much the little lawyer, she'd informed them that if she had an indoor voice to use indoors, it only made sense that she had an outdoor voice to use outdoors.

            Sometimes, her daddy said that Claire was a chip off the old block.  Sometimes, Claire gave her daddy a headache.

            "I want to go outside, too," Noelle piped up.

            "Her dress probably isn't muddy enough yet," Xander said.  "Noelle likes her white dresses muddier than that."

            No one said anything.

            "That was a joke," Xander said.  

            "Like Cheetos," Brookie said suddenly, and then she began giggling fiercely.

            Xander smiled.  At least the two year old thought he was funny.  "Oh yeah," he said.  "I've still got it," He paused for a minute and then shrugged.  "I'll take them outside."

            Claire followed Xander, and Brookie wriggled out of Lindsey's arms, intent on doing whatever Claire did.  Noelle ran ahead of them, onto the playground, and, shrugging, Drew, Geyton, and the twins followed.

            "Why don't you go outside, too?" Kate asked Brandon in her I'm-the-Mom voice.  Brandon knew that when his mom used that voice, it wasn't really a question.  Compliantly, he followed Xander and the other kids, brooding, just for the fun of it.

            Kaya put her hand on Lindsey's cheek.  "Where Darla?" she asked him.  "Where Sunny?"  She looked at Faith and sniffed a little.  "Kaya miss Sunny," she said.  

            The adults stared at Kaya, no one knowing quite what to say.

            Kaya filled the space.  "Damn," she said, still sniffing.

            Lindsey raised an eyebrow at Faith, and Faith had an insane desire to laugh.

            She hugged Kaya to her.  "I second that," she said.

            "My mommy isn't here yet," a little voice said, so softly that Willow almost didn't hear it.

            She looked down at Val, and she picked her up.  "She'll be here soon," she promised the little girl.  Val said nothing.  "Way with the soon-ness," Willow said.  "I promise."

            "Willow promise?" Val asked.  She knew that if Willow willow-promised, then everything would be all right.

            Willow nodded.  "Willow promise with whip cream," she said.  "And sprinkles.  And you know those little yogurt covered gummy bears…"  Willow realized she was babbling and grinned at herself.

            "Anne said she'd be a little late," Buffy told Willow, "but she'll be here."  

Willow nodded.  Val's mom was still working on finding a solid job, and there were lots of days that Val stayed later than the other children at Potential.  Willow didn't mind.  She loved spending time with the quiet child, one on one.

            Buffy clasped her hands in front of her.  "Okay," she said out loud, "game plan."  She was silent for a minute, wishing Giles was here.  He was more of a game plan-y person than she was.  "I'm going to go call Dawn, and I'll see if Angel has any lawyer-y types that can get on this.  There's got to be a prophesy about Kaya and what she's seeing somewhere."

            Realizing that she was speaking friendly about prophesies in front of Kate and Lindsey, Buffy's eyes widened a little, and she froze.

            "An educational prophesy?" Lindsey asked dryly.

            For the thousandth time, Kate wondered if Potential was the right place for Brandon.

            "A very educational prophesy," Willow said, nodding vigorously.

            Kate sighed.  Was there any other kind?

            "Okay," the voice whispered.  "Move in."

            When Xander heard the first child scream, he knew it was Claire.  The little slayer had an extreme set of lungs on her, and the moment one of the men in black made a grab for her, Claire let out a scream that made the walls shake.

            "YOU'RE A STRANGER.  I DON'T TALK TO STRANGERS."  When the man slapped a hand over her mouth, Claire just continued screaming.  Then she bit his hand, and in a move too quick for him to anticipate it, she kicked him, knocking him to the ground.

            "And that," Xander said out loud, running toward Claire, "is why you don't make little slayers mad."

            Xander knew from personal experience that a little slayer temper tantrum was not a pretty thing.  

He rushed toward the child, but in the next instant, he heard more screaming, and then he felt a slight pinch in his neck, and everything went black.

            The man on the ground dodged Claire's next kick, and in the time it took him to do that, a dart whished through the air and hit the little girl on the neck, and Claire collapsed to the ground.  Brandon stared at the man, horrified.  He was hurting Claire.

            Brandon wasn't about to let anyone hurt Claire.

            He ran toward the man, his little mind racing.  _"Canta Dieze!" he yelled, scrambling to remember the right spell.  The man stood, frozen to the ground for a split instant before the Wolfram and Hart shaman managed to break the small child's spell._

            Seeing Noelle struggling with one of the men, Geyton and Drew ran to defend her.  Drew was pretty sure it would be okay for him to bite this guy.

            "NO NO NO NO NO!" Brookie screamed.  "Brookie doesn't want you!  You're not shiny.  You're not a sporkie.  Bad man!"  The man struggling to sedate Brookie groaned as she came dangerously close to kicking him in a very sensitive place.  He hadn't realized a two year old slayer would be quite so strong.

            The twins ran to Brookie, ready to fight with her, but before they knew what was happening, they'd been hit with darts as well, and they collapsed in unison, unconscious.

            Whish.  Whish.  Whish.  The darts flew through the air, and Geyton, Drew, and Noelle fell to the ground.  The man holding Brookie thrust a needle into her arm the second before she broke his nose, and a moment later, the tiny blonde Slayer was unconscious as well.

            Panicked, Brandon looked around him.  Everyone else was down.  Manfully, he kicked the man who held Claire and, mumbling under his breath, he put up a shield against the darts the other Wolfram and Hart operatives were trying to shoot at him.  He looked around.  Men were dragging off Brookie and Noelle.  They were trying to take Claire.

            "Don't take her," he said, trying to be brave, but really wishing his Mom was there with him.  "Take me." He kicked the man again, and he managed to rip the unconscious Claire out of his grasp.

            "We don't want you," the man hissed.  "We want her."

            The magic he'd used had drained almost all of Brandon's energy.  He was getting tired, and he didn't know what else to do.  He only knew one thing.  He couldn't let the man take Claire, Noelle, and Brookie all by themselves.  They were just girls, and somehow, Brandon was pretty sure that these men weren't going to be giving the little ones dolls or weapons to play with.  The girls would need someone to protect them.

            _"Junarnos Ami," Brandon whispered with the last of his strength, supernaturally tying himself to Claire through the spell._

            Now there was no way they were taking Claire without him.  No way.

            It all happened in the span of fifteen seconds, and after four more, the playground was empty, except for Xander and four unconscious children. 

 Noelle, Claire, Brookie, and Brandon were nowhere to be seen.

TBC… This is the longest chapter so far, so please review… I know it was a lot of action and not a lot of fluff, but I hope it was okay anyway…

Oh, and next chapter, I'll hop back inside, and you'll get to see what was going on in there during the fight, especially with Anya, Spike, and another familiar face.  And yes, there's a reason that Buffy and company didn't come running out to save the kiddos, and yes, you'll learn what it is next chapter.

Anyway, coming up, Dawn and Angel enter the picture, the kidnappers learn about slayer temper tantrums first hand, and Brandon realizes he's stuck with a bunch of girls… plus more on Sunny, Darla, and the crypticness that is the W&H plot.

PLEASE REVIEW!!!


	6. Nofe Air

DISCLAIMER: I own Kaya, Brookie, Claire, Noelle, Geyton, Brandon, Drew, Val, Sunny, and the inconsequential Suri.  All others are property of Joss Whedon/ Mutant Enemy.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: *happy birthday to me*… it was my birthday when I started writing this… prob not when I post it, but here's a gift from me to you.  I hope you enjoy!

Also, I'm considering Halloween ficlets, and I was thinking about a Potential Pre School Halloween party, or maybe ficlets centering around Lindsey, Brookie, and Claire, Kate and Brandon, Val and Anne, or Faith and Kaya.  If you have a preference, let me know please!  Also, for more fluffy Halloween goodness, check out my fic about Anya and Xander's three year old daughter, MOMMY'S LITTLE CAPITALIST AND THE PERFECT COSTUME.

Also, expect to be confused a bit on the Darla/Sunny front.  Just know that it will eventually make sense.

SMALL PACKAGES: CHAPTER SIX-ISH (I think)

            _The child thrashed back and forth, her non-corporeal body suspended in the air.  She whimpered.  It hurt.  It hurt bad all over.  Why were they hurting her?  She wanted her mommy.  She wanted her Kaya.  She wanted her White Lady._

_            Darla reached up and gripped the child's hand.  "Sunny," she whispered, saying the child's name almost reverently.  "Baby, it's okay.  I'm here.  Darla's here."  The child, her face frozen in pain, sang under her breath, the same desperate, comforting words over and over again._

_            "My Darla.  My Darla.  My Darla."_

_            Her White Lady was here._

_            "My Darla."_

Kaya wrinkled her nose.  A moment later, she sneezed, and Faith, in mother mode, grabbed a Kleenex out of her back pocket and held it up to Kaya's nose.

            "Blow," she said.

            Buffy and Willow stared at her disbelievingly.

            "Color me shocked," Buffy said in a whisper to Willow.  "Way with the colorage."  Then she looked around to make sure there weren't any spare kiddos running around.  The phrase 'color me' was a very dangerous phrase to use in the presence of small, magically gifted children.

            Willow gave Buffy a solemn look.  "Remember the purple incident," she told Buffy sternly, the corners of her mouth pulling a bit in a stifled smile.

            "Purple incident?" Kate raised her eyebrows slightly.

            "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain," Willow said, trying to distract them.

            All of the adults stared at the wicca for a moment.

            Val traced her hand softly over Willow's face.  She liked Miss Willow best of all.  "Wizard of Oz," she said softly.

            Willow grinned at the little girl.  Four year old Val always knew exactly what Willow was talking about.

            Kaya sniffed again, and when Faith gave the little girl another tissue, Kaya threw it on the floor.  "No that," she said.  

            Faith simply raised an eyebrow.  Her daughter was perfectly capable of speaking full and coherent English sentences, but in the past few weeks, she'd resorted to baby talk.  Faith wasn't sure why.

            "Wrong," Kaya said.  "Light.  Sunny gone.  Darla gone.  Fuzzy."  Kaya's voice got more frantic.

            Buffy knelt down next to the child.  She reached out a hand to touch her arm gently.  "It's all right," she said.  "It's going to be all right."

            "Can't see," Kaya said, panicked for a moment.  Lindsey moved his finger's towards the child's face, and she blinked.

            She gave him an irritated look.  Apparently, her normal eye sight wasn't bothering her at all.

            "Can't see Others," Kaya said.  "Only hear.  Where Spike go?  Anya?"  The child was fighting back tears.

            _Spike rested his hand on the girl's shoulder, even as he felt himself being pulled from this place, pulled away from her.  Anya did the same._

_            "Don't worry, little pig-tailed person," Anya said, even though Kaya wasn't currently wearing pigtails.  From Anya, it was a term of endearment._

_            "We're here, half bit," Spike said.  No one was going to mess with his girl.  No one._

In Willow's arms, Val struggled to get down.  Completely surprised that the child was being aggressive, Willow sat her down, and Val ran over to Kaya, wrapping her arms around the other little girl.

            "Shhhhh," Val said, rocking back and forth with Kaya, hugging her.  "They're still here."

            "You," Kaya said simply.  "What see?"

            Val shook her head.  "I don't see things," she said.  "I'm not a seer.  I'm a witch."

            Buffy and Willow stared at the child.  That was about the most they'd ever heard the shy little one say.

            As the words left Val's mouth, her mind was filled with a vision.  Sensing the older girl was seeing something, Kaya held onto her fiercely, hugging her with a vengeance.  Whatever Kaya did, she did with a vengeance.

            Val's mouth went dry.  _Five of them.__  There were five of them.  In a circle?  No, that wasn't a circle.  It was pointy.  Red chalk on the floor.  Blood?  Children lying on the ground.  See through people.  Collapsing.  Down the drain.  Blood?_

Faith reached out a hand to steady the little brown haired waif of a girl.  Val blinked several times.

            "What see?" Kaya asked her.

            Val looked around the room, blinking several times.

            She said nothing.

            Another bright flash of light had Kaya jumping, and this time, everyone saw it and heard the accompanying pop.

            "What was that?" Buffy asked suspiciously.  She was automatically suspicious of anything that popped, sizzled, or deteriorated in a dead-like fashion.

            Lindsey's heart skipped a beat.  "Claire," he said suddenly, bolting for the door.  "Brookie."

            Buffy ran toward the playground, Kate and the others on her heels.  Outside, the ground was littered with children. 

            "Xander," Willow yelped.  She ran to him and squatted down beside him.  She smacked his face a couple of times.

            _Spike watched __Willow__ slapping the whelp.  "Wish I could do that," he said, only half kidding._

_            Anya sighed dreamily.  "Me too," she said, clearly lost in some kind of sadomasochistic fantasy.  _

            Buffy knelt over Drew and Geyton, and she pulled a dart out of Drew's body, hissing in a new breath as she did so.  What kind of monsters had been here?  Her students were special, but they were still kids.  Just kids.

            Willow got herself together and mumbled a spell under her breath.  "_Levantasa," she said._

            "Wake up," Val chimed in, her voice hoarse and barely there.

            Xander's eyes fluttered, and all over the playground, the children started to wake up.

            Lindsey knelt next to Xander.  "Where's Brookie?"  he asked, his voice hard and edging on desperate.  "And Claire?"  Lindsey felt the sheer ice of panic working its way up his body.

            "Where's my son?" Kate asked, anger clear in her voice.

            "They're gone," Buffy said, hardly able to believe it.  "And Noelle."

            "Where?" Kaya demanded.

            "The bad place," Val murmured, shivering.

            "We tried to stop them, Miss Buffy," Drew said, trying manfully not to cry.  "We really did."

            Geyton nodded.  "I was gonna bite them," he said.

            Lindsey forced his heart to stop racing and picked up one of the darts.  He stared at it, his vision blurring for a moment with bitter hatred in the back of his throat.

            "Wolfram and Hart," he said, his voice surprisingly calm.

            They had taken his daughters.  They were going to pay.

            The half-demon guardsmen rubbed his temples, located just below his second, invisible set of eyes.  He had no idea how he'd gotten stuck watching the children, and now they were starting to wake up.  He wasn't supposed to watch children.  He was supposed to eat them, but these children, with the possible exception of the male child firmly magically attached to the older of the two sisters, were not to be eaten.  They had another purpose.

            Noelle was the first to wake up, and looking around.  Then her eyes settled on the guardsman.

            "Who are you?" she asked, never one to be afraid of anything, let alone strangers.

            The guardsman didn't answer.

            "Am I supposed to kill you?" Noelle asked earnestly.  The guard looked at her, surprised a little, but he said nothing.  "Maybe I'm supposed to stab you," Noelle said, thinking out loud.

            "Are you a demon?" she asked.  The man looked human, but something about him made her hairs tickle the back of her neck.

            "Ummm…no," the demon responded, sounding incredibly unbelievable.

            Noelle narrowed her eyes at him.  "I bet I'm supposed to chop you up," she said, her voice bright.  Maybe this was going to be fun after all.  "I want some juice."

            The guard stared at her, completely taken off guard.  "What?" he asked.

            "I want some juice," Noelle insisted.  "I'm thirsty.  Then maybe I'll kill you.  Do you have a glaive?  Or maybe a crossbow or a hand axe?  Just not Holy Water.  I hate Holy Water."

            Claire and Brandon opened their eyes to see Noelle chatting up the guard.

            "Holy Water is for boys," Claire said.  "And little kids like Brookie."

            Brandon glared at her.  "Stupid girl," he muttered, not even thinking about the fact that he was glad she was safe.  "Who are you?" he asked the guard.  "Where are we?"

            The guard returned to saying nothing.

            "Where's my juice?" Noelle asked, her little eyes flashing.  The demon guard got out his cell phone and made a quick call to the drivers of the transportation unit.

            "They want juice," he said, feeling ridiculous.  He was a Krysnthos Demon, not a babysitter, and yet, here he was, asking for juice.

            "JUICE!" Claire bellowed, and her voice echoed off the walls.  The guard shuddered.  That kid could really yell.

            "Quiet, Claire-y," Brookie said, putting her hands over her ears as she sat up.  Recognizing the man who had captured her, Brookie wrinkled her nose.

            "Where's Brookie's Daddy?" she asked.

            The demon guard said nothing.

            "WHERE IS OUR DADDY?" Claire bellowed.

            "Quiet," the guard hissed.  To his surprise, Claire quieted for a moment.  She shared a glance with Noelle.  There was definitely something demon-y about this guard.

            Brookie, still too young to pay much attention to her slayer sense, stood up on her feet.  The guard cursed himself for not tying the children up.  The tranquilizer was supposed to have knocked them out for the duration of the trip.

            No such luck.

            "Where Brookie's Daddy?" Brookie asked.  The man said nothing.  "Brookie.  Want.  Daddy."  

            Claire's eyes opened up a little wider.  Brookie was getting mad.  Claire's little sister didn't get mad that often, but when she did, she threw the world's biggest tantrums and only Daddy could stop her.  Not even Miss Buffy could stop a Brookie Tantrum.

            Brookie threw herself against the side of the van with all of her strength, screaming as she did so.

            The guard approached her, and she threw him all the way across the space of the van.  He landed with a loud crash.

            "NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!" Brookie screamed.  Claire covered her ears.

            Brookie stomped her feet.  "Brookie want Daddy!" Brookie screamed, throwing herself against the side of the van again.  Her eyes glinted murderously and the demon guard cringed.

            He had so not bargained for this.

            In the front of the van, two gentlemen in suits turned to look at each other as the van trembled madly, rocking back and forth until it almost tipped.  Simultaneously, they looked back to the back of the van.

            "You know," the one in the passenger seat said nervously, "maybe we should get them some juice."

            _The vision was coming in strong, and Doyle placed his hands carefully on top of Dawn's head.  _

_            "So you're the reason my hair always got messed up after a vision," Cordelia told him crossly.  "I should have known."_

_            Doyle grinned at her.  "Aye," he said, his eyes sparkling with mischief.  "That would be me, Cordy."_

_            Cordy huffed a bit, but she smiled back.  The kiss that had given her Doyle's visions had bound them together for the long haul, now that she was…_

_            "Dead?" Doyle asked, breaking his concentration for a moment.  "Now that's not a good word to describe a voluptuous woman like yourself."_

_            "Do your air quote 'work,'" Cordy said, feeling more herself than she had since she'd been dead and infinitely more herself than she had during her years spent in the coma._

_            Doyle settled his hands on the nape of Dawn's neck and he tempered the vision as it flowed through him and into her, gentling its effects.  He'd held Cordelia's neck the same way, and even then, the visions had become too much for his girl._

Dawn chewed on the end of her pencil.  Translation was hard work, especially with roommate, Suri, blasting Christina Aguilera in Spanish at an obscenely high volume.

            The vision gripped her, suddenly and violently.  After a moment, she calmed, trying not to attract Suri's attention.

            _Five men.__  A pentagram drawn in blood.  Children on the way.  Blood._

Dawn gasped.  

            Suri looked over.  "Soy un genio atrapado…" she sang in Spanish along with Christina, trailing off.  She gave Dawn a concerned look.  "Do you want me to call your cousin again?" she asked.  As far as Suri knew, Dawn suffered from migraines, and her cousin was a male nurse who got medicine for her.

            Angel had just about died when he'd realized that Dawn had told her roommate he was a male nurse.  Dawn, even though she was still shaking from the vision, grinned, just thinking about it.

            "I can call him," Dawn said, her voice a little hoarse.  In the months since Cordy had slipped out of the coma and into death, she'd gotten used to being Angel's seer.  She picked up the phone and dialed the number by heart.

            Hearing Angel's secretary answer the phone, she rolled her eyes.  "Just put Angel on the phone," she said.  Dawn rolled her eyes.  "Mr. Angel," she corrected at the woman's insistence.

            Suri went back to her singing, thinking about Dawn's hunky male nurse cousin.

            "Dawn," Angel answered, his voice low and concerned.

            "You know the thing?" Dawn asked.  "The thingy thing," she specified, casting a concerned glance at Suri.  "Yeah, it's..ummm…thinging.  So, yeah…"

            "I'll pick you up in fifteen minutes," Angel said.

            Dawn hung up the phone and looked down at her notebook.  "Yay for supernatural procrastination," she said.

            _"That's my girl," Doyle said, removing his hands from her neck._

_            Cordy looked at Dawn's perfectly manicured nails.  "That's my girl," she said, feeling her body pulling to a place she didn't want to go.  Putting her hand on Dawn's shoulder, Cordy steadied herself.  She was Dawn's champion now.  A ghost champion, sure, but a champion with an impeccable sense of fashion none the less._

_            "I could use a bit of a drink," Doyle said._

_            Cordy rolled her eyes.  Ghost Doyle could always use a bit of a drink._

By the time the men tentatively opened the window to the back of the van where the captives were being held and set down four juice boxes, the screaming in the back of the car had stopped, and the half demon guardsman was lying on the floor unconscious.

            The men eyed the children suspiciously.

            "Who did this?" the man on the right asked gruffly.

            All of the other kids looked at Brookie, who was currently lying down on the floor and using her feet to make herself spin around in circles.  She giggled fiercely.

            "Spinny Brookie!  Spinny Brookie!" she sang, collapsing into little kid laughter.

            The men looked at the two year old and back at the demon.  She wasn't even a fifth of his size.

            "Wheeeeeee," Brookie said, spinning faster.

Seeing the juice, Brookie stood up and wandered over to them.

            The men looked at each other.  Why oh why hadn't they tied the children up?  They should have known the sleeping potion would wear off quicker than they had thought.  They should have had a contingency plan.

            Brookie bounced over to them.  "Juicey juicey juicey juice for Brookie," she said, cheerful again now that her temper was spent.

            Brookie looked at the juice.  "Brookie wants orange juice," she said.

            The men looked at each other.  "There isn't any orange juice," the one on the left said gruffly.

            Brookie narrowed her eyes and began stomping her feet.

            "Brookie wants orange juice.  Nofe air!" she screamed, still cranky from being kidnapped and her lack of afternoon nap-age.

            "Nofe air?" one of the men asked.

            "No fair," Claire translated.  "NO FAIR," she yelled, just to be yelling something.

            "NOFE AIR!  NOFE AIR!" Brookie echoed.  Then she tilted her head to the side, remembering something.  "Brookie want Daddy!" she screamed.

            The guard on the floor was slowly regaining consciousness. He groaned.  Not this again.

            Noelle reached for a juice box and sipped it happily.  "First the juice," she said.  "Then we play battle and spar."  Noelle's eyes sparkled.  "I need something sharp," she said seriously.

            Claire giggled fiercely and grabbed a juice box.  Brandon did the same.  Noelle's plan sounded just fine to them.

            Looking at each other, the two men in the front of the van carefully slid the window to the back shut and locked it.  The man on the right double checked the lock twice.

            Better safe than sorry, he thought.

            Through the window, they could still hear Brookie yelling, and every once in a while, the entire van shook violently with the child's tantrum.

            The employees of the underground faction of Wolfram and Hart had a feeling it was going to be a long, long day.

            _"My Darla.__  My Darla."_

_            Slowly, the tension ran out of the little girl's body, and she sank back to the ground.  Darla caught her in a gentle hug, and she rocked the child back and forth, crooning to her._

_            Sunny snuggled into Darla's lap, the tears still wet on her face._

_            "Why do they hurt me?" she asked.  "Where did Kaya go?"_

_            "It will be all right, my darling girl," Darla whispered, kissing the child's forehead.  She gazed off into the distance.  "I won't let them get you now.  Either of you."_

_            Sunny laid her head on Darla's chest.  "My Darla," she murmured sleepily._

_            Darla held her tight.  Sunny was hers, and whatever force was attacking the child was going to pay, pay dearly, and pay in blood._

_            Sunny sank into sleep, and Darla rocked the child, cuddling her and singing to her in a soft and lilting voice._

TBC… yes, I did kill Cordy.  Yes, I did interpret ghost Doyle as having been at Cordy's side all along.  Yes, Dawn now has Cordy's/Doyle's visions.  No, Buffy does not know this.  If you have any other questions, feel free to email me.

Up next, the Scoobies, Lindsey, Kate, and some of the kiddos head to LA, Brookie, Claire, Brandon, and Noelle make a plan, we see a few more familiar faces on the other side of things, and Angel hops into the picture.

This was an UBER long chapter and it took a long time to write. 

PLEASE REVIEW!!!


	7. Cryptic and Squishy

DISCLAIMER: I own the kiddos.  All others are property of Joss Whedon et al.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: It's already 2:30 AM, and I'm still sickly, so you guys just get a quick, short update because it's been two weeks and I promised I'd update at least once every two weeks.  See how hard I'm trying?

SMALL PACKAGES: Chapter Seven

            "Is he dead?" Claire asked curiously, looking at the half-demon guard Brookie had thrown across the room in her tantrum.

            Brookie, completely oblivious to the fact that she'd hurt the man, squatted down next to him and tilted her head to the side.  Cautiously, her little eyes wide, she reached out one finger and poked him.

            "Squishy man," she pronounced.  The little hairs on the back of her neck stood up, and the two year old wrinkled her nose.  "Bad squishy man," she pronounced.  

            Noelle narrowed her eyes at Brookie.  "I was supposed to get to kill him," she said.  "It was my turn!"

            "NO!  You killed the one that was giving gooey looks to Uncle Xander," Claire pointed out.  "So I think it was my turn."  

            Brandon shuddered at the thought of the female demon who'd tried to put the moves on Xander.

            "Stupid girl," he muttered.

            "Brookie girl," Brookie reminded him reproachfully.  Without pausing a minute, she continued poking the guard.  "Squish-squish-squish," she sang happily.

            Noelle turned her attention to Brandon and gave him a steady look.  "Can you make me something sharp?" she asked, her little eyes dancing.  "In case he wakes up?"

            Brandon thought about it for a moment.  He took a sip of his juice box and tried not to think about the fact that he was stuck in the back of a truck with three stupid girls, one of whom was Claire, and a squishy demon.

            "I have a better idea," Brandon said, giving them his patented boys-have-better-ideas-than-girls look.  "How about I make us lots of sharp things and we break out of here?"

            Noelle nodded.  "Really sharp," she said.

            "SHARP!" Claire yelled, just to be yelling something.

            The man driving the transportation vehicle looked at his partner uncomfortably.  "Did you hear that?" he asked.

            "What?" the other guard asked.

            "Someone just said 'sharp,'" the driver replied.

            The men pulled into the private airport hanger and looked at each other for a moment.

            Finally, the driver spoke.  "I knew we shouldn't have given them the juice," he said.

            Angel looked down at his cell phone and cursed it for its bad reception.  He'd been waiting in his car for three minutes, and Dawn still wasn't down yet.  

            "I'm not going up to the room," he said out loud, simply.

            He looked back down at his watch, and thought of the way Cordelia had looked after a vision.  For all he knew, Dawn was collapsed on her futon.

            Angel took a deep breath.  He was going in.

She scrubbed the floor without saying a word.  Blood made such an awful mess.  Secretly, she despised the job, but what had she expected?  She was an intern, and that meant clerical work and cleaning up after ritual sacrifices to interdimensional powers of evil.

The intern looked down and shook her head in disgust.  There was so much blood, and the pentagon wasn't even drawn straight.  She could have performed a better binding sacrifice herself, and she was just the intern. 

 She touched the center of the pentagon, marked with the Pac Man like symbol for the Kintroshian Death Goddess, Tyrai.  The floor beneath her swirled a bit, and a child's face appeared in the blood.  The intern reached out to touch the image, and the small honey-blonde child's solemn face disappeared.

"Evil," she muttered.  "It's always conjure this and sacrifice that, but no one ever thinks about the fact that somebody has to clean it up."  The least they could have done was tell her what kind of dark magic they were doing, who they were trying to bind to the Ocelot's Amulet, and why in the world the were summoning Tyrai when everyone knew that Kintroshian Goddesses were useless in dimensions they didn't control.

"Sure," she grumbled.  "Don't tell the intern anything."   

No one ever did.

"Squishy man not sporkie," Brookie said contemplatively, poking the demon again, as if to confirm that he was indeed squishy and not, in fact, somehow a spork.  She wrinkled her forehead as if in great concentration, and a moment later, she stood up, climbed on top of the guard's stomach, and started bouncing lightly.

            "Boing boing boing," she said.

            "Stop boinging him," Claire said bossily, in the way of a true older sister.  

            Brookie stuck her tongue out at Claire.  "My squishy boingy," she said stubbornly.

            "If you sit down and drink your juice like a good girl," Brandon said, suddenly inspired.  "I'll conjure you up a spork."

            Brookie paused mid bounce, and then she beamed at Brandon.

            "Love you!" she said brightly.

            "Ewwww," Brandon said.

            "About those sharp things?" Noelle said, tapping her foot impatiently.

            The door to the back of the van opened just as Brandon began the transmogrification spell.  He shut his mouth instantly and gave the men an innocent look.

            "What are you kids doing?" the driver asked suspiciously, the gun gleaming in his hand.

            "Nothing," all four children chorused at once.

            Both Wolfram and Hart employees looked down at the half demon guard, lying on the floor.

            "Great," one of them muttered.  "He was supposed to be the muscle."  

            Buffy excused herself from the room and picked up the phone, dialing Angel's number by heart.  He was supposed to keep Wolfram and Hart under control, and that meant no pre-school kidnapping jobs.  That was his big, broody vampire job.  

            The phone rang and rang with no answer, and Buffy gritted her teeth.  She was dealing with irate parents, a walking piece of cryptic-y goodness in the form of a mini-Faith, and she was stuck listening to the message Harmony had recorded on Angel's answering machine.

            "This is Angel.  I'm off saving the world or drinking blood or losing my soul or listening to sappy music or buying hair gel or…what else do you do?"  There was mumbling in the back ground.  "Anyway, leave me a message, and I'll try to save your life and/or eternal soul as soon as possible."

            BEEP.

            Buffy glared at the phone.  She hated that stupid beep.

            "I'm not waiting," Lindsey said.

            Willow shot Xander a look.  "Waiting would be good," she said, trying to offer the man a sympathetic look.  "Buffy's making a call, and we'll have everything under control."

            "My son is missing," Kate said through clenched teeth.  "He's been taken for God knows what reason, and you expect us to stand here while 'Miss Buffy' makes a phone call?"

            Lindsey looked away.  He knew quite well who Buffy was and who she was placing the call to, but he could see that Kate was too upset to care.  That, at least, was something he could relate to.

            "They'll be flying them out of the hanger in Courtmath," he said, no doubt in his voice.  "They have a head start on us.  Our best bet will be to catch them when they land in L.A."

            _"Look," Anya said, temporarily amused, her muscles relaxing now that The Call to nothingness had lessened.  "The briskly speaking one is being assertive."_

_            "Bout time somebody is," Spike muttered.  The Call had been getting stronger.  The only thing that held him now away from  the force of its power was Kaya, and he could see that it was wearing the small child out._

"Miss Willow?" Val whispered, still safe in Willow's arms.  "I think I saw something.  I think I'm supposed to go with you.  You're gonna need me."

            Faith looked furtively back and forth between Lindsey and Kate and the building where Buffy had gone to make her phone call.  Her job was protecting Kaya, but she could see the pain in their faces, and she felt for them, for the other children.

            "Take them away," Kaya said, her voice very angry.  "Mine!"  She stomped her foot.  "My Spike!  My Anya!  My Jenny!"

            Xander and Willow looked at each other.

            "Did she just say Jenny?" Xander asked.

            "That would be an uh-huh," Willow said.

            "Was that an uh-huh or an uh-uh?" Xander asked.

            "Uh-huh," Willow said, trying to emphasize it.

            "This is ridiculous," Kate snapped, her voice catching in her throat.  "They have my son, and come hell or high water, I'm getting him back.  I never should have brought him here, but his damn father…" Kate trailed off, and after a moment, ice settled over her eyes and she spoke again.  "I'm going after my son," she said.  "Not in five minutes, not when Buffy gets back.  Now."

            "You don't have any idea how to start," Xander pointed out.

            Lindsey met Kate's eyes.  "I do," he said simply.

            Kaya listened intently to this exchange, and then she looked up at Val.  "Hi you," she said.  "Need you.  You see.  See me?  See my pretties?"

            _"Pretties?!"__ Spike shrieked, outraged.  "I'm not pretty."_

_            "You are rather aesthetically pleasing," Anya said objectively, "for a fully clothed, non-corporeal being bearing no resemblance to any type of currency that consistently trades well against the dollar."_

_            Even as she said it, Anya's eyes were locked on Xander's.  Spike grunted.  There was no accounting for taste._

"I don't see," Val whispered, her voice soft and scared.  "Not anymore."

            "You will," Kaya promised.  "You see, Tara," she said.

            Willow stared at the child.  "What did you say?" she asked, her voice low.

            "Mine," Kaya said firmly in response.

            Faith smiled apologetically at Willow.  "That was her first word," she said, by way of apology.

            "How come Claire's Daddy and Brandon's Mommy left?" Drew asked curiously.  "Is Claire's Daddy going to bite Brandon's Mommy?"  Somehow, the question seemed logical in his four year old werewolf mind.

            "Angry parents gone," Xander commented, picking up on the baby talk around him.  "That bad."

            Willow barely heard him.  "What did you say?" she asked Kaya again.

            "Like Sunny," Kaya said, trying to explain something Willow didn't understand.  "Mine."

TBC… Angel in Dawn's dorm room, Lindsey and Kate coming after their children, and the kiddos on an airplane, plus some explanations of the death goddess, the situation with Tara, Sunny, Darla, and Jenny, and what exactly it is that WH is trying to pull…

Oh, and if you'd like to see pics of the kids, there's a link to a site in my profile that has pics of what they all look like, with expanded sections for Brookie and Claire, and more on the way, but first…

PLEASE REVIEW!


	8. You See

DISCLAIMER: I own the kiddos and Suri.  Joss owns everyone else.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I've had serious blockage on this fic, hence the no updates, but I'm trying to be good, so here you guy, me writing through block even though it feels icky.

SMALL PACKAGES: CHAPTER EIGHT

            He wore a suit, a tie, gray socks, and around his neck, a tiny vial holding the blood of the vessel.  The talisman was inconvenient in the presence of vampires, granted, but it was a necessary precaution.  He was messing with forces beyond his control, best not to let his only remaining link to the vessel out of his sight.  

            Cross-dimensional summoning spells were a tricky thing after all.  Father didn't think he could handle it.  Father didn't understand about the death goddess, her power, her beauty.  Father didn't understand what channeling Tyrai would mean for Wolfram and Hart.

 Talot uncrossed his legs and looked impatiently at his watch.

            They would be on their way now, with the final sacrifices.  Three slayers, given freely by their bloodkin.

            Brandon narrowed his eyes at the guards.  They were planning something.  He could tell.  The little boy glanced over at Claire.

            "WE DON'T LIKE YOU," Claire informed the guards.  They winced at the volume of her voice.

            Brookie walked up to the men, and the one on the left stepped backward, just out of her reach.  Slowly, Brookie took another step forward, and without saying a word, she tentatively poked the man in the knee.  After a moment, she smiled, plopped herself down on the ground next to him, and poked him again.

            The man laughed.  He turned to the other guard.  "She's just a kid," he said.  Brookie poked his knee again.

            "One," she said, holding up one finger.

            The men laughed.

            "Get me the sharp things," Noelle said in her best whisper to Brandon.  

            Instantly, the guards had their attention on her.  Her dark hair was tangled, her pristine white dress practically shredded.  Noelle smiled angelically at the men.  

            "Two," Brookie said, poking the man's knee again, holding up two fingers, and giggling delightedly.

            _"Kyati polonin chebeya luaht._"  Brandon muttered the words under his breath, his little heart racing.  He'd seen Willow conjure a weapon out of nothing before, when those two headed demons with the orange teeth had attacked last Halloween.  Wasn't this how she'd done it?  He faltered for a moment, trying to think of the rest of the spell.  Deep down, he knew if he didn't act soon, something very bad was going happen, and Brandon wasn't about to let anything bad happen to _his_ girls.  Not even Claire.

            The music and the distinctly dorm-like smell hit Angel the second he stepped into the hallway.  Awkwardly, he made his way to Dawn's room.  Suri was playing Christina Aguilera again.  As far as Angel knew, Dawn's roommate didn't own any other CD's.

            He reached his hand up to knock on the door, and the second he did, Suri threw the door open.

            "Hi Angel," she said, pushing her dyed-black hair out of her face.  "You come to party with us this time?"  

            Angel opened his mouth and Dawn came quickly to his rescue.

            "He's just here to take me to get some more medicine," she said smoothly.  "You know me, Suri, big with the medicine."  Dawn nodded, and Angel rolled his eyes.  The youngest Summers was so not cut out for detective work.  

            "You never come to our parties," Suri said, flicking her hair behind her shoulder and pouting.  She stared at Angel until he felt absolutely naked.  Suri licked her lips.

            I knew I shouldn't have come in here, Angel thought and then he realized what Suri had said.

            "Parties?" he asked, sending Dawn an older brother look.

            Dawn opened her eyes wide and elbowed Suri.  "Uh… study parties," she improvised.  "With books and work and… learning."  Dawn nodded.  "Learning," she said again, nodding vigorously.  

            Angel shook his head.  "Come on," he said.  "We have to go get your…medicine."

            Dawn rolled her eyes.  Angel was so not smooth.

            "Later Suri," Dawn called over her shoulder.

            Suri had already turned the music on full blast and didn't hear a word she said.

            Angel glared at Dawn.  "I'm never coming up here again," he said.

            "You promise?" Dawn asked wryly.  

            They walked in silence for a few steps, and then Angel sighed.  Whether he liked it or not, Dawn wasn't a little girl anymore.  She was in college, and, for better or worse, she was his seer.

            "What did you see?" he asked.

            "Blood," Dawn said, closing her eyes.  "Lots and lots of blood."

Talot tore his mind away from his father and thought of more pleasant things.

Talot put his legs up on his desk and leaned back, moving the vial of blood back and forth in between his fingers, watching the way the light played off of the deep red liquid and hearing the echoes of the child's screams in his mind.  Blood was power, and blood was life.  If he wanted to channel Tyrai into the vessel he had so carefully chosen, years ago when his father had first sent him to this dimension, Talot would need power. Untainted, unabated power.  

            "You said Tara," Willow said, setting Val down and bending to Kaya's level.  "Sweetie," she said to Faith's daughter, trying to force her voice to stop shaking, "you said Tara."

            "Tara," Kaya said.  "Mine.  Like Sunny."

            "Like Anya?" Xander asked.

            _"Like Anya?" Spike mimicked, rolling his eyes.  _

_            Anya smacked him, her eyes locked on Xander._

            "Anyarific orgasms," Kaya chirped with a wicked grin.  Faith gave her a stern look.  Kaya looked back at Willow.  "Not like Anya," she said.  "Mine.  Like Sunny."  

            "You see Sunny, Tara," Kaya said, walking over to Val.  "You see, my Tara.  You see Sunny."

            Willow looked at Val.  "Do you see Tara?" she asked, her voice laden with emotion.  Val looked at Willow with wide eyes.  She'd never seen Miss Willow look like that.  Miss Willow was nice and fun, and full of magic.  Miss Willow wasn't sad, not like this.

            Willow saw the panic in Val's eyes, and she forced herself to calm down.  "Do you see a woman?" Willow asked calmly.  "She has brown hair and light skin, and she's a little taller than me."

            Val shook her head solemnly, her brown hair flying into her face.

            "No, silly bint," Kaya said.

            _Spike grinned at her.  "That's my girl," he said._

            "No, silly bint," the child said again, smiling for her Spike.  "Tara not tall.  Brown hair, yes."  Kaya gently touched Val's hair.  "Brown hair Tara."  She touched Val's eyes.  "Tara see," she said.

            "Wowza!" Xander said.  "Brain flash.  Brain flash."  He pointed to the top of his head.  "Right here," he said.  Everyone looked at him.  "She's not talking about Tara," Xander said.  "She's calling Val 'Tara'."

            Val looked down at the ground.  Everyone was looking at her.  Most of the time, she was real quiet, and nobody looked at her.  She didn't like it when people looked at her.  They knew she was different.  Daddy said she was different, and so did cousin Beth, and so did everyone…

            Val wrinkled her nose.  What was she thinking?  She didn't have a cousin Beth.  It got like this sometimes, with all the memories and dreams confused up in her head.  Sometimes, she couldn't remember what was real, and what was a dream.  Bethie was a dream.  That was all.

            Kaya pointed a finger at Val.  "You see, Tara," she said.

            "She means 'you will see'," Xander said.  "It's little kid talk."  He arched an eyebrow, trying to keep thinks light for the little ones' sake.  "I'm fluent."  

              Buffy came into the room as Willow muttered a spell under her breath.

            "I gave Angel the heads up," Buffy said.  She looked around.  "Where's Lindsey?" she asked.  "And Kate?"  

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" Kate asked, her voice clipped.  She didn't trust Lindsey.  She knew he'd worked for the law firm that had Brandon.  People didn't change that much.  

            Lindsey maneuvered the car around a corner.  "Trust me," he said.  "We'll make it in time."

            Neither of them wanted to think about what would happen if they didn't.

            "I'll kill any son-of-a-bitch that touches my son," Kate said through clenched teeth.

            "Agreed," Lindsey said, his voice mild, but his mind was on Claire and Brookie.  He hadn't saved them from their mother to let Wolfram and Hart take them now.  They were his girls, and Lindsey McDonald protected his own.

Claire saw him and leaned over to help.  "Shoelace?" she suggested.  _Kyati__ polonin chebeya shoelace luaht.  That sounded about right to her._

            Brandon shook his hair.  Claire was so dumb.  She was such a girl.

            "THREE!" Brookie yelled at the top of her lungs.  The guard she was poking looked down just in time to hear the sickening crunch of his knee as the two-and-a-half year old potential's little hand connected solidly with it.

            "FOR SPORKIE!  FOR DADDY!" Brookie yelled, her voice even louder than Claire's, as the man fell to the ground, grabbing his leg.

            "Did you break his leg?" Noelle asked curiously.

            Brookie nodded and started bouncing on one leg.  "Broken, broken, broken," she sang.

            "No fair!" Noelle said, stamping one of her feet.  Instantly, her eyes landed on the other guard.  "Then I get to be the one to play Broken with him."  She jumped to her feet and rushed toward him.

            Broken?  The guard thought.  Play Broken?  He looked at the other man, rolling around in pain on the floor.

            "I don't think I want to play Broken," he said, his voice shaking.

            Noelle smiled and advanced on him.  "It's a lot of fun," she said seriously.  

            Brandon reached out a hand to stop her.  The guard was planning something.  Brandon could tell.  If only he could remember the rest of the spell, so that the ugly slayers could have lots of girly weapons.

            _"Kyati polonin chebeya…" Brandon trailed off, unsure of himself._

            "Kleenex?" Claire suggested in a yell.

            Brandon ignored her.  "_Kyati__ polonin chebeye luaht coynika foh..."  That was it.  He almost had it._

            "Boingee broken, broken boingee…" Brookie wiggled her little bottom as she sang to herself.

            _"Jshundight," the guard said, and in the next instant, a second before Noelle reached him, he jerked a bracelet off his wrist, threw it to the ground, and crushed it under his foot.  Immediately, Brookie stopped boinging, Claire stopped yelling, and Brandon realized exactly what was going on.  He grabbed for Claire's hand, and a fraction of a second later, the four children fell unconscious on the floor.          _

            The remaining uninjured guard looked down at Brandon.  "You're not the only one who knows magic, little boy," he said.  With a disgusted glance at the injured guard, the man leaned over and picked up Brookie and Noelle.  After he'd secured them on the plane, he came back, tore Claire's hand from Brandon's, and carried her on the plane.  With a parting glance at the two guards Brookie had injured and the unconscious little boy, the last guard climbed into the plan.

            He would deliver the children.  After all, disappointing the son of a senior partner would never do.

            As the words left her mouth, Willow closed her eyes and entered Kaya's memory.  She saw the world as the child saw it: filled with _others_: Anya, who played capitalism with her, Miss Jenny, who followed the tweed man wherever he went, and Spike, who called Kaya little luv and loved her best of all.

            In her mind's eye, Willow saw Val, the way Kaya had first seen her: surrounded by a soft white aura, and just the barest trace of the outline of a woman Willow had once loved.  

            In the next instant, Willow saw a small, blonde child, heard her screams.  She saw Angel- no, Angelus- felt him breathing on her neck, and the little girl was screaming.  They were hurting her.

            Willow opened her eyes with a gasp.

            "Willow?" Buffy's voice broke into her thoughts.  "Why the gasp-age, Will?" Buffy asked.

            Willow felt the emotion drain from her body and she heard the words leave her lips as if from very far away.  "Val is Tara," she said.  "Her soul, her essence, whatever you want to call it, it's Tara's, and there's a little girl with long blonde hair, and Angelus, and Spike and Anya and somehow, it's all tied together, and now, I'm Babble Girl."

            Val looked up at her teacher, her favorite person in the whole wide world.  "Miss Willow," she said.  "Who's Tara?"

TBC… up next, Spike and Anya try to figure out what's calling them away from Kaya, the back story of Talot's vessel, Tyrai, and what the heck's going on with all the cryptic stuff, and everyone goes after the little slayers.

I known there's a lot going on at once, but at the end of next chapter, the plotlines should converge.  

Some of you guessed the Val = Tara thing a long time ago, but I hope it was a nice surprise for the rest of you!  I have a few more in store, if you people are still reading the fic.  Let me know.

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	9. A happy ever after

DISCLAIMER: Joss owns all of the canon characters.  I own the kiddos.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: For some reason, this fic has been really hard for me to write lately.  I've just been stuck.  I've even written parts of the sequel, but for some reason…

Anyway, even though I know everyone loves them, you won't being seeing all the kiddos from here on out, at least not very much.  You'll see the little Brookie, Claire, Noelle, Brandon, and Val, as well as Sunny and Kaya, but Drew and Geyton probably won't show up again until the last chapter.  Sorry, but plot and pacing wise, it just has to be that way.  

Also along those lines, this chapter will sort of jump all over the place because all of the loose ends are about to come together.  

SMALL PACKAGES: Chapter Nine

            _Darla held the little girl tight in her arms, singing to her._

_            Cradled in Darla's arms, Sunny's body slowly relaxed and she snuggled against her white woman.  It was getting harder and harder for Sunny to remember her other life, her Mommy, her Daddy, and the thing in the dark._

_            "Darla," Sunny said._

_            Darla looked at her.  The child rarely said her name.  "Why do they hurt me?"_

_            Anger rose in Darla's throat, but she kept her outward expression calm except for the slight tightening of her lips.  "I don't know, darling girl," Darla said._

_            Sunny accepted the answer in the way of small children.  The awful, pulling feeling had been happening for what seemed like a long time now.  Ever since Kaya had gone away.  Kaya, who, before Darla, had been Sunny's only friend._

_            Darla cuddled the child.  She'd never gotten to hold her own child this way, and in the end, she'd lost Connor completely, lost him to Jasmine, to vengeance.  She'd been ready for hell when she'd lost that battle, and instead, she'd been given Sunny._

_            "Darla," Sunny said again._

_            "Hmmm?" Darla made a sound under her breath acknowledging the child's question._

_            Sunny screwed her delicate little face up in thought.  "Are we dead?" she asked._

_            Darla continued rocking, as Sunny stared up at her.  "Yes," she replied, "precious child, we are."_

_            Sunny didn't say anything for a minute.  "I thought so," she said finally.  Sometimes, Sunny remembered dying.  Here, in Darla's arms, she pushed the idea out of her mind.  Darla would keep her safe.  Kaya had said.  _

_            "They shouldn't be able to hurt me if I'm dead," Sunny said, her small voice high and clear and certain._

_            Darla swallowed the helpless fury she felt at the memory of the little girl's non-corporeal body contorted with pain._

_            "No," she said softly.  "They shouldn't."_

Brookie rubbed the corners of her eyes with her entire fist.  How long had she been asleep?  Where was she?  Where was Daddy?

            The two year old tried to roll over, but found herself bound to the seat with thick coils.

            "Brookie doesn't like car seats," she said firmly.  No one responded.  She turned her head.  "Claire-y?" she said, her little voice ringing out.  "Daddy?"  She paused, her bottom lip trembling a little.  "Boingee?"

            Brookie wiggled against the thick chain that held her in place.  She sniffed.  It hurt.  Someone was mean-mean-mean to tie her up like that, and when she found out who it was, she was going to kick them.  Where it hurt.

            She let out a scream of frustration, the almost animal kind that kids could only manage when they were very young.

"Brookie?"  

"Noelle?" Brookie sniffed.

"Yeah.  It's me, Brookie.  There aren't any weapons here, and Claire's still asleep, and I'm all tied up, too."  Noelle sounded more than perturbed.  "I think I may have to hurt someone," she said.

Brookie didn't respond.

"We may have to slay someone," Noelle continued, looking around and plotting the best course of action.  

"Broken?" Brookie asked.  "Play broken?"

"Oh yeah," Noelle replied.  "As soon as Claire wakes up, we're going to play a lot of broken, and we might even play bleeding, too."

Brookie wrinkled her nose.  Demon blood smelled a little bit like Play-Doh, but it tasted much, much worse.

Brookie wiggled her body back and forth.  She'd long ago figured out how to get out of car seats without breaking them.  You just had to wiggle your body just right and go all bendy with your legs…

Slowly, Brookie slid out of her chains, grinning devilishly.  "Noellie and Claire-y," she called out.  "Brookie coming."

Brookie tottled to the seat in front of her and saw Claire, still unconscious, slumped against the leather seat, chains holding her firmly in place.  Brookie jumped up on her lap.  "Claire," she whispered so loudly that she might as well not have been whispering at all.  "Wake up, Claire."  In a demonstration of sisterly love, Brookie shoved her sister impatiently, but Claire remained locked in a magic-induced sleep.

Brookie hopped off the seat and ran another row forward, where she saw Noelle struggling against her own chains, a mutinous expression on her innocent face.

"You know what?" she said to Brookie, her voice low and angry.  "When the bad guy gets back here, I think we may have to play pain."

The plane started its decent into Los Angeles, and Brookie rubbed at her ears as they popped.  How long had they been asleep for anyway?  Brookie frowned.  Without Claire awake, the plane was just too, too quiet.

Kate held her son close.  Lindsey had assured her that he was just sleeping, that he would wake up, but he hadn't yet.  She'd wanted to take him home.  She'd been adamant about that.  Her son wasn't going to be a pawn in whatever struggle Good and Evil had going.

That's why she hadn't wanted Brandon to go to Potential.  Why she'd argued tirelessly against her ex-husband.  

"Claire," the sleeping boy murmured.  

From the pilot's seat, Lindsey glanced over his shoulder.  "He's talking about her again," he said softly.  

Kate sighed.  Brandon's sleep talking was the only reason she was there at all, the only reason she hadn't taken him straight home.

_They don't want him_, Lindsey had told her when they'd found Brandon, unconscious on the runway.  _They want the girls._

Kate had been ready to argue, ready to run, to do anything to keep Brandon safe and away from whatever had taken him, and then, he'd spoken.  

_Claire_.  That's all he'd said since they'd found him, nearly five hours ago, and Kate knew in her heart that he would never have forgiven her if she'd taken him away before making sure that the girls were okay.  She could have lived with that, but she knew her son, and she knew that, much worse, he never would have forgiven himself.

She'd carried that burden, that bitter self-anger.  She didn't want that for Brandon.  Not ever.

"How long until we land?" she asked.  If Brandon wasn't awake to tell Lindsey what he knew before landing… Kate didn't want to think about it, or about what might happen to the three little girls.  The expression on Lindsey's face, hard and anguished at the same time, was covered with a polite, emotionless mask.  

Kate hugged her son, her own face tightened with anger and on the edge of collapsing with worry and relief.

She kissed his forehead.  

"EWWWWWWWWWWWWW!"  Brandon opened his eyes, bolted straight up, and contemptuously wiped the kiss off of his forehead with the back of his hand.  "Mooooooom," he complained.  "Kissing is for girls!"

Kate laughed, and with the laughter, she almost lost it altogether.  Brandon was back, he was okay, and he was, more than anything else, still Brandon.

The little boy suddenly looked up at his mother, horrified.  "Where's Claire?" he asked.  "And Brookie and Noelle?"  He paused.  "Where are they?"  Words started tumbling out of his mouth at warp speed.  "I was supposed to protect them.  That's what magic does.  It protects people.  They may be slayers and everything, but they're still little.  Really little."

Kate didn't point out that Brandon was only about a month older than Claire.  "Sweetie," she said, turning him to look at her.  "The bad men still have them, but we're going to get them back."

When she saw the expression on his face, the anguish and the stubbornness, she knew she'd made the right decision, bringing him along.  "We have to get them back," he said.  "They magicked me.  I didn't know they could do magic, and I was trying to make weapons so Noelle could play her stupid Broken game with the guards, well at least the guard who Brookie hadn't already Boing-ed real bad, and that guard, he just threw something on the ground and crushed it under his feet, and then…" Brandon trailed off.

Lindsey nodded and clicked the plane he'd chartered into auto-pilot.  He walked back and sat down next to Kate and Brandon.  "We're going to get them back," he told Brandon softly.  "And the people who took them are going to be very, very sorry."

Brandon narrowed his eyes at the man who was Claire's Daddy.  "You promise?" he asked.  Lindsey nodded, and the little boy shrugged and quickly spoke again.  "I mean, not that I like them or anything, because they're girls and I don't, but they're still little, so we should protect them, right?"

            "Right."  Lindsey said nothing else, as he returned to the pilot's seat.  So there'd been a spell, as he had imagined, and they'd sent at least three guards to take the girls.  If Brookie had hurt them, chances were that the guards were at least part demon.

            What did Wolfram and Hart want with the small slayers?  

            Lindsey pressed the thought out of his mind and took solace in the fact that his girls were giving their captors hell.

            Talot looked impatiently at his watch.  The final sacrifices would be here within the hour.

            "Sir?" the voice interrupted his thoughts and he turned a dangerous grin on its owner.  

            "Yes," he replied civilly, his eyes raking up and down the intern's body disinterestedly.

            "I finished cleaning the chamber," she replied, willing him to let her do something else, something real.  Making copies and cleaning up after sacrifices so wasn't what she'd signed on for.  Didn't these people realize she went to Harvard?  If that didn't say evil mastermind potential, she didn't know what did.

            "Very good," he replied.  Then he smiled and held up the tiny vial of blood.  "Do you know what this is?" he asked.

            "A talisman of some sort," she replied, ready to impress him with her knowledge.  "Most likely of Corinthian, Butonic, or Kintroshian origins."  She squinted at it.  "Containing sacrificial blood."  She paused and bit her bottom lip.  The last part had been a guess, but hadn't she just finished cleaning up after a sacrifice?  This new guy, whoever he was, was totally sacrifice happy.

            "Very good," Talot replied, gesturing to a chair in front of him.  "Sit down…" he trailed off and raised his eyebrows at the intern.

            "Laura," the girl supplied him with her name as she took a seat.

            "Let me tell you a story, Laura," Talot said, and the intern's heart began beating just a little bit faster.  He was handsome, he was young, and whoever he was, he was powerful.

            "There was once a boy who grew up with a very powerful father with no vision whatsoever," Talot said, and Laura's heart sank.  His story was about his relationship with his father?  Was intern another word for cheap therapy?

            "And the father didn't realize that respecting boundaries meant limiting power," Talot continued.  "The father didn't realize that, with the proper tools, no power, no realm was out of reach.  So the boy grew up, moving along with his father as the father worked in this dimension or that dimension, and the boy learned that people thought that everywhere, death had power."

             He sat back in his seat.  "People die all the time," he said, his voice still low and charming.  "And though we can enslave them with their consent…" Talot trailed off.  Enslave was such a harsh word.  "Though contracts can last post-mortem," he amended himself, "even necromancers cannot truly harness the power of the dead."

            Laura leaned forward.  Now this was getting interesting.

            "Sure, they may use the dead for their purposes, but the powers that lie beyond life, ancient powers, bloodline powers, powers thought lost once a person's life is spent…" Talot grinned at her.  "Those are the powers I seek," he said.  Lifting the talisman into the sun, Talot smiled.

            "It's a wonderful story, this tale of mine," he told her.  "It all starts with a goddess from the boy's favorite dimension, a dimension where death itself is the true beginning of power, and the dead little girl who could bring the goddess to life."

            Laura was practically salivating.  Now this was what she called an internship.

            _"Sunny, do you remember how old you are?" Darla asked, wanting to change the subject._

_            "I remember," Sunny said in her solemn, funny manner.  "I was this many."  The child held up five fingers.  "I remember," she said.  "It was my birthday, only there weren't any candles, and it was dark, and then there was a man…"_

_            Sunny shook her head.  "I don't want to talk about this, please," she said politely, her little voice solid._

_            "What do you want to talk about, my baby?" Darla asked.  The longer she held this child, the longer they stayed here together, the more she felt she had been given a second chance.  Whoever she'd been born to, this child, this ghost-child, was hers now._

_            "Tell me a story," Sunny said, her voice small.  "About a happy ever after."_

"And," Xander finished with a flourish, trying to keep the children's attention, "they all lived happily ever after."

            Val and Kaya stared at him, neither of them saying a word. 

            "Okay," Xander muttered, "not my best showing."

            "Where did Miss Willow go?" Val asked.  "And will someone please tell me who Tara was, if that's okay and everything."  Val's voice was barely above a whisper, and as the sentence left her mouth, she blushed.  

            Xander stalled.  "How about we have some graham crackers," he said, digging into the bag he'd brought along.  The girls stared back at him wordlessly, Val still blushing and Kaya looking at him like she was about to pummel him.

            That child was definitely Faith's.

            "Tell ya what," Xander said.  "How about we go see what's taking Miss Buffy and Miss Willow and Miss…er… Faith so long."  It had been hours since the rest of the children had come home, and Buffy, Faith, and Willow had been locked up in Buffy's office the entire time, plotting.

            Xander sighed and longed for the good old days of action without forethought.  "What ever happened to spontaneity?" he said under his breath.  "The good old I've got me a stake and a glaive, now let's go stop us some evil."

            _Spike's eyes darkened.  "The whelp has a point.  They're bloody attacking Kaya, and it's all we can do to keep ourselves from being pulled toward the great, sodding magnet of destruction and whatnot."_

_            "I say we fight this evil," she said, her voice bright.  "With the strength of our wits and the force of real, economical consequences and sexual deprivation."_

_            "Or," Spike drawled, "the slayers can hurry it up, take Kaya and us to the source of the problem, and kill it."_

_            "That would work, too," Anya admitted._

"Time to go," Kaya said.  

            Xander opened his mouth to reply, but he didn't get the chance.  In the next minute, Kaya let out a bloodcurdling yell.

            "BITCH HELL DAMN!" the child yelled.

            Faith stuck her head into the room.  "Kaya Joyce!"

            "Time to go, Mommy," Kaya said sweetly, now that she'd managed to get her mother's attention.  "Others say it's time to go."

            Faith sighed.  These days, Kaya was a force to be reckoned with.  "Not just yet, baby," Faith said.  Kaya opened her mouth to say something else, but Faith cut her off. "And trust me, little girl, you don't want me to come out there because you're saying what you shouldn't."

            Kaya closed her mouth, stomped her foot, and glared mutinously at her mommy.  Faith looked back at the child evenly.  Kaya crossed her arms over her chest, and after one last warning look, Faith closed the door.

            Damn, she loved that kid.

            "Bugger this," Kaya said toward the door, just softly enough that she knew her mommy wouldn't be able to hear it.

            "Natives are getting restless, B," Faith told Buffy.  "You guys about done with that spell yet?"

            Willow nodded.  "I can transport the three of us, Kaya, Val, and Xander to L.A, where we'll meet up with Angel."

            "If he ever gets my message," Buffy muttered.  Stupid Harmony and her stupid voice mail.

            "The spell will enclose the girls in a protective aura that will set off an alarm system if anything non-slayery and supernatural comes near them," Willow continued, setting the last elements into place.  "And, at my command, it will teleport Val and Kaya to Anne's house and out of harm's way."

            Faith nodded.  She'd known all along that Kaya would have to go, that the two of them would have to face this, but she'd refused to go until Willow could promise that Kaya would be safe.

            Willow's hands shook as she performed the final preparations.

            Val was Tara.  Tara was Val.  

            Even now that hours had passed, the chorus played over and over again in her head.  

            But what about my Tara? She wondered.

            _"Well, isn't this cozy?" Doyle asked Cordy.  "You and me and the back seat of a car, Princess."_

_            Cordy snorted.  "In your ghost-dreams, Doyle," she replied.  "We're in the backseat of Angel's car, and he and Dawn are right there."_

_            "Too much stimulation for you, darlin?" Doyle asked, a wicked grin settling over his face.  "I understand."_

_            Cordy smacked him.  Ghost Doyle just really needed to be smacked every once in a while._

_            Doyle tilted his head to the side and then placed his hand on top of Dawn's head.  The visions would be too much for the wee one otherwise.  The tantalizing possibilities with the equally tantalizing Ghost Cordy would have to wait._

The force of the vision threw Dawn's head back, and she let out a sound that was somewhere between a gasp and a grunt.

            _A little girl with blonde hair, dead, light coming out of her body.__  Light being torn in a million different directions.  More children.  Dying.  Bleeding.  _

_            Darkness with a name.  Tyrai._

"Wolfram and Hart," Dawn gasped as she opened her eyes.  "This sacrifice thingamajig is happening at Wolfram and Hart.  Tonight."

            Dawn ignored her headache.  The vision thing kept on thinging, day after day.  That's what it did.

            "You okay?" Angel asked her.

            "I'm fine," Dawn said.  Angel continued looking at her.  Dawn sighed.  "I'm fine, okay?" she said, sounding for a minute again like she was fourteen, not twenty.  

            Angel searched her face to see if she was telling the truth.

            "If you don't stop looking at me, I'll tell Suri that you give therapeutic massages three days a week out of your home," Dawn said.  "And she'll never leave you alone after that."

            Angel started driving.  As far as threats went, it was a good one.

TBC…Kaya and company teleport to LA where they run into Dawn and Angel.  The non-corporeal Doyle and Cordy meet up with Anya and Spike, Buffy finds out about Dawn's visions, Lindsey, Kate, and Brandon make their way to Wolfram and Hart, and the little slayers fight back. 

Now I remember why I don't update this fic very often.  It's a friggin lot of work.  Anyway, I know we were a bit all over this chapter, but at the beginning of next chapter, all of the story lines will start converging, and then, hopefully, it will be easier for me to write and for you to read.  If you have a heart or any redeeming qualities, please take the time to let me know that you're reading.  This took forever to write, and it won't take you much time to let me know what you think.

PLEASE REVIEW!     


	10. Daughter

DISCLAIMER: I own Kaya and the other kiddos.  Joss owns the canon.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: If you like kidfic, please check out THERE BE DRAGONS, my new fic starring a Spike/Dru child. if you thought Brookie was a little loopy with the sporkie comment and that Kaya was cryptic, wait until you see Danni.

SMALL PACKAGES: Chapter Ten

            Dawn wracked her mind, trying to remember everything she'd seen.  "The kids were there again," she said.  "Little girls.  They were bleeding from the neck and from the stomach, and there was a symbol drawn with some kind of tar on their foreheads."  Dawn wrinkled her nose as she thought, and Angel bit back a smile.  For all she'd grown up, Dawn Summers was still very much a Dawnie, and very much the little sister type.

            Angel said nothing of the sort out loud.  Dawn hated feeling younger than anyone else, and the last thing he wanted was to tempt Dawn into feeding some unsightly idea into Suri's head.  Dawn's roommate was really something else.

            "Kids," Angel said, forcing himself to concentrate.  

            "Girls," Dawn said nodding.  "Little ones, like they weren't even in school yet."

            _"Oh, come on now," Doyle groaned.  "Do the math here, Angel.  It isn't that difficult.  Girls.  Little.  School.  Blood."_

_            Cordy snorted.  "Like you would have figured it out if it hadn't been for the fact that you get the Cliffs Notes version of everything, Mr. I Need a Ghost Drink."_

_            Doyle rubbed his temple and gave Cordy an aggrieved look.  "I need a ghost drink," he said out loud._

_            Cordy looked down at her nails, trying not to let him see you smile._

_            "And what about you, Princess?" Doyle asked.  "What would you be needing, besides a ghost manicure?" He smiled at her, a wicked gleam in his eyes._

_            Cordy gave him a pointed look.  "A world of in your dreams," she said._

_            "Aye," Doyle said, leaning towards her.  "That's the way it is my dream, Cordy.  Albeit you're a bit taller, and your hair's different, and it isn't actually you or anything like you aside from the female part, but."_

_            Cordy smacked him._

_            Doyle stuck his hands in his pockets.  "She wants me," he said under his breath._

_            Cordy snorted again._

_            Doyle turned back to Angel.  "Come on," he said, the brogue heavy in his voice.  "Think.  Girls.  School."_

"School," Angel muttered under his breath.  Dawn breathed in quickly and looked at Angel.

            "Ohmigod," she said.  "Buffy.  I mean, not Buffy, but her kids.  I mean, not her actual kids, because she doesn't have any, but, you know, her kids at Potential."

            "Slayers," Angel said.  Subtly, he looked at the speedometer and sped up.  "Who at Wolfram and Hart would want little slayers?  And for what?"

            _"Darla," Sunny said.  "My Darla."_

_            "Yes, sweet child?" Darla replied, smoothing Sunny's blonde hair out of her solemn face._

_            "Do you think some day we might not be dead anymore?" Sunny asked wistfully.  "I think I might like being not dead. I think I liked it before." Sunny looked down at the ground.  "The hurt-y thing never happened before I was dead."  Sunny's wide eyes searched Darla's face for answers.  _

_            "Sometimes," the child whispered, almost no sound leaving her lips.  Darla struggled to hear her.  "Sometimes I think they killed me."  Sunny looked down at the ground.  "Sometimes I think that they killed me just so they could hurt me more."_

"Don't make Brookie hurt you."  Brookie frowned fiercely and put her hands on her hips, her little bottom sticking out just a little bit in the back as she did.  

            The guard groaned.  How in the world had two of the three children woken up already?  The spell was supposed to have knocked them out until the preparations for the ritual were completed.  They weren't even out of the plane yet, and already, he was starting to worry that he was in over his head.  At least the loud one was still sleeping.

            He looked at his watch.  Backup would be here soon.

            "Oh no, Brookie," Noelle said, her eyes glinting dangerously.  "We WANT to hurt him.  In fact, I invented a brand new game, just for him."  Noelle turned toward the man, doing the equivalent of a little girl saunter as she took a step towards him.  "It's called World of Pain."

            Noelle shot the man a devious little smile.

            "WORLD OF PAIN!" 

            The guard groaned.  Now all three of them were awake.

            "Claire-y!" Brookie said, altogether delighted.  

            "It'll be okay, Brookie," Claire said with all the confidence of an older sister.  "You and me and Noelle can play world of pain, and when we get back home, we'll have cookies."

            "Cookies." Brookie said, thoroughly distracted and absolutely delighted at the idea of something yummy. 

            "But first," Claire said, older, wiser, and not as easily distracted by cookies. "WORLD OF PAIN!"  Claire bellowed out the last words.

            An incredibly bright smile spread across Noelle's face and she let out an incredible war cry.  Noelle's mother didn't think the war cry was very ladylike, but what did she know?  

            The man took one look at the advancing pint sized slayers and groaned.  Forget about backup.  This was about self-preservation.  He muttered the transportation spell under his breath.  It might kill him to tap into enough magic to send the girls straight to Mr. Big Shot at Wolfram and Hart, and it certainly wouldn't have been possible had they not already been so close, but at the moment, it was looking like a better possibility than playing World of Pain with Claire, Noelle, and Brookie.

            The last thing he heard as the girls disappeared from sight, was Brookie singing in a high and extremely hyper voice.  "Cookies, cookies, cookies!  Cooooooooookiiiiiiiiiieeeeees.  Yum yum yum!  Yum yum yummers!  Cookies with a sporkie.  Sporkie sporkie sporkie, pain pain pain."

            When all he heard was silence, the man breathed a sigh of relief.  For better or for worse, the girls were at Wolfram and Hart.

            Willow took a deep breath.  "It's gonna feel a little bit like." she trailed off, trying to think of a way to describe the feeling of being magically teleported somewhere.

            "Swimming?" Val suggested softly.

            "Fuzzy?" Buffy suggested.

            _Anya__ waved her hand in the air vigorously.  "Oooooh oooooh ooooh," she said, like a child waiting to speak in class._

_            Spike cleared his throat and shot a sardonic look in Anya's general direction.  "Like an orgasm?" Anya said.  "Is it going to feel like an orgasm, with the massive amounts of non-material pleasure and sense of non-capitol gain?  And with the."  _

_            "Oh sodding hell," Spike muttered.  After all these years, he should have known better than to get her started. _

_._

"Like orgasms?" Kaya asked innocently, parroting Anya.

            "Kaya," Faith said, a mild degree of warning in her voice.

             "Not me, Mommy," Kaya said cheerfully.  "Others."  She waited just a moment and then added, "Sodding hell."

            "Kaya Joyce."

            "Others," Kaya repeated, the very picture of innocence.

            _"Half-Bit," Spike said, giving Kaya a look.  "Watch your language."_

Kaya looked at Spike for a moment and then proceeded to summarily ignore him.

            _Spike recognized the expression on her face._

_"Kaya."___

_            Kaya looked at him.  Spike, who loved her best of all, wasn't supposed to tell her not to do stuff.  He wasn't supposed to have a Mommy Voice, like the one Mommy used when Kaya was getting into trouble._

_            Kaya wasn't sure she liked her Spike getting her into trouble.    
  
_

"Teleportation feels a little bit like your skin is jello," Willow said, as Xander opened his mouth to guess.

            "I was just going to say that," Xander replied.  "I'm an incredible guesser.  What kind of jello?"

            Val smiled softly at him.  She'd been wondering the same thing.

            "Orange jello," Willow replied.

            Xander nodded, looking thoughtful.

            "I don't like orange jello," Val whispered, almost inaudibly.

            "Hot damn!" Kaya said, sending an endearing little baby smirk in Spike's general direction and looking exactly like her mother.  

            "Kaya Joyce!" Faith said.

            _"Kaya Joyce!" Spike said at the exact same time.  "I bloody well did not just say that.  Don't you tell her I did."_

Kaya turned to Faith.  "That one was me," she said proudly, speaking one of the first complete sentences Buffy had heard her say.

            Faith struggled to keep a straight face.  

            She loved that child.  Loved her so much, and Kaya was so damn funny.

            "Quiet time," Faith told Kaya sternly.  "Five minutes."

            Kaya opened her mouth to speak, but one look from Faith stopped her.  Kaya sent a pouting look towards Spike, who instantly felt an urge to somehow make Faith take back the punishment.  Poor little half-bit.

            "About this teleportation thing," Buffy said, trying not to let her continued amazement at Faith's natural interaction with her daughter get in the way of things.  "Are we ready?"

            Willow ran through a last minute checklist, and as she did, a silent Kaya held her arms up to Faith, who picked her daughter up.  Kaya always needed to be hugged when she was in trouble, and Faith always needed to hug her.

            "And we're ready," Willow said.  Silently, Val mimicked Kaya, holding her arms up to Willow.  Willow picked up the child, and Val laid one hand on her cheek.  "Willow," she said simply.

            Willow took Val's hand in hers and allowed the child to join her in the ending of the transportation spell, their magics flowing together.  Willow smiled softly.  The little girl's magic, her essence, felt like Tara.  Younger.  More innocent.  More helpless, but it was still Tara.

            The moment the last motion had been completed and the last word said, Xander felt distinctly like orange jello, and all of them disappeared into thin air.

            _As soon as she felt the air on her skin, Kaya twisted around in her mother's arms, to look around.  _

_            "Where are we?" Faith asked.  __Willow__ and the others were nowhere to be seen, and she and Kaya were standing in the midst of a light fog the color of raindrops just before a rainbow._

_            Kaya knew where they were.  Other Place.  They were in the Other Place.  _

_            "What the hell is going on?"  Faith tried to keep the panic out of her voice.  "B?  Red?  Xander?"_

_            "Now, what kind of example is that?" Spike asked.  "And you wonder why she has a swearing problem."_

_            Faith whirled around to look at him.  "What are you doing here?" she asked. "Aren't you dead?"_

_            Spike met her gaze evenly.  "Don't know," he replied, answering her questions in order.  "And yes, I am dead."  He gave her a falsely prim look that didn't quite manage to hide the small smirk on his face.  "We prefer living challenged."  _

_Faith stepped towards him, ready to pummel him for no other reason than the fact that he was here, and she needed something to fight.  Kaya was in danger.  Her baby was in this place, this unworldly place, and Faith had to be able to fight something, someone.  Wordlessly, Kaya reached out her arms toward Spike.  _

_Spike took the child into his arms and adjusted her on his hip._

_"It's not my usual place either, Slayer," Spike said.  "Bit smoky for my taste."_

_            A wave of sound spread through the non-space, and Spike immediately braced to protect Kaya.  Faith watched his every move, and something in her stomach clicked.  Spike wouldn't let anything get her baby.  She was sure of it.  _

_            "You're here."  The voice had no visible source, and yet it was everywhere at once._

_            "We're here," Faith said.  "If you wanna fight, then bring it."_

_            A low growl escaped Spike's throat._

_            Kaya struggled in Spike's arms to get down, but he held her tightly.  She gave him a fierce look, and the vampire met it, an expression of fatherly warning on his face.  "Sit tight, little one," he said.  Kaya wiggled some more.  "Bit."  The single word of final warning stilled the child._

_            "Let her down."  The voice spoke._

_            "No way in bloody hell," Spike said._

_            "And she picks up the language habit completely from me," Faith scoffed.  "Uh-huh."_

_            "I mean her no harm.  Our time is short.  The longer you stay here, the closer the worlds come to falling.  I meant to bring the child alone.  She can withstand the force of the barrier, and the barrier can withstand her presence.  Yours it cannot."  _

_            Faith and Spike were strangely silent._

_            "Ask her.  Kaya knows I mean her no harm."_

_            "Kaya?" Faith said.  "Baby?  Do you know something Mommy doesn't know?"_

_            Kaya didn't respond.  _

_"Platelet?"__ Spike asked._

_Kaya__ nodded solemnly._

_"What?" Faith and Spike asked in unison._

_Kaya__ opened her mouth and then closed it again, giving Faith a very pained look._

_"What's wrong, baby?" Faith asked.  "Why can't you tell Mommy?"  Kaya rolled her little three year old eyes.  "Oh," Faith said, realizing.  "Quiet time is over."_

_"Been here before," Kaya said, glad to finally speak.  "Mommy been.  And Spike been.  And Kaya been.  Long time ago." Kaya wiggled to get down again, and this time, Spike set her softly on the ground._

_"This Kaya's place," Kaya said.  _

_"Yes, child," the voice from everywhere replied.  "This is your place.  The place where you were conceived.  The realm between all realms.  The realm of neither living nor dead."_

_"Hold on there, Skippy," Faith said.  "I think I would damn well remember something like this."_

_"Language," Spike said under his breath.  Faith glared at him, and Kaya grinned broadly._

_"It was a necessary precaution," the voice said.  "The coma, an unfortunate side effect.  As I said, your kind cannot long last here.  You were brought here for a purpose, both of you, and the child is that purpose.  She has a greater calling.  She isn't of your world, either of your worlds.  The closest you can come to understanding it is that she is the child of both, both the living and the dead, but truly, she is neither."_

_"What is she?" Spike asked._

_"My daughter," Faith growled.  "She's my daughter."_

_"She is Our daughter.  The daughter of this place.  The daughter of all realms, the daughter of none.  For now, she is the Speaker.  The Speaker for the Dead."_

_"She is not your daughter," Faith said bitterly.  "She's mine.  I was the pregnant one, and quite frankly, I don't remember any rendezvous with a giant bodiless voice."_

_"We borrowed a body of sorts, one that could sustain itself in this place long enough for it to be done.  She is yours, Slayer, and she is his, but first and foremost, she is Ours.  Our daughter.  Our legacy.  Our last gift to a failing realm, and she is in danger."_

_More than anything, Faith wanted something to punch, something to kill._

_"What kind of danger?" Spike asked, his fury just barely contained._

_"Their plan would bring down the realms.  They must be stopped.  The power of the dead cannot be harnessed.  Her life force is tied to this place, this boundary.  It would kill her, and that is not in Our plan."_

_Faith snorted.  "Some planner you guys are," she muttered._

_"Silence, mortal."__  The command was not loud, but Faith's bones shook with the words._

_"She must be joined by her parents.  You must give your power up to the child, and the power of this place will go with you."_

_"Parents?"__ Faith asked.  "As in plural."_

_Kaya__ looked at Faith in that moment, and all Faith could see was her baby's blue, blue eyes.___

_  Kaya turned her gaze to Spike, and the same realization settled over the vampire._

_His little bit.  His._

_"Listen quickly, child.  You must bring her to you.  It's in you.  Bring her back, and their sacrifice will have been for naught."_

_Kaya__ nodded solemnly.  She felt the tension in the air and took that moment to break it.  "Well bloody hot hell damn," she said.  She waited for someone to say Kaya Joyce, but no one did._

_Spike and Faith were silent, and so was the voice._

In the next moment, the fog was gone, and the three of them were standing on solid ground.

Kaya reached out tentatively to touch Spike.  "Real now," she said.  "Here now."  Finally, the child understood what she was meant to do.

"Ready," she said with a fierce determination.  

_Our daughter.___

The unworldly voice was less even than an echo.

Spike and Faith looked at each other, their thoughts in tandem.

_Our daughter.___

TBC. Okay, show of hands, who saw THAT coming?  Hehehehehe. anyway, Kate, Lindsey, and Brandon will be back next chapter, and the action picks up as the little slayers fight back, Brandon goes into a huge magical and not-at-all-girly tantrum, Buffy finds out about Dawn's visions, and it's up to Buffy and co. to stop the sacrifice while Kaya meets the first leg of her destiny as the Speaker.

PLEASE REVIEW!


	11. Still

DISCLAIMER: I own the kiddos, Joss owns the canon.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: So, I've had hard core block on this fic for the LONGEST time, but I'm determined to see it through to the end.  I'm so sorry it's taken so long.  I hope it's worth the wait.

SMALL PACKAGES: Chapter Eleven

            Sitting behind his desk, the man looked impatiently at his watch.  The little slayers should have been there by now, and Talot was not a man to be kept waiting.   He fingered the necklace around his neck.  

            "Not long now," his whispered the child's blood.  "The final stages of sacrifice, the slayers' blood, and then…" he trailed off, imagining himself speaking to the child he himself had killed years before.  "There will be pain, of course," he said, relishing the thought.  "Your pain, and the pain of the sacrifices, but your pain will bring power, great power.  Tyrai will return, and the Death Goddess will bring to me the power of the realms, the power of the dead." 

            Talot smiled broadly.  "Dead slayers, dead witches, dead demons…" he trailed off.  "All of that power, mine through you, my lovely sacrificial vessel."  

            He thought of the child and smiled.  He'd known, the moment he'd first seen her, that she was the one, and the geigen readings he'd taken had confirmed it.  She lived at the center of a mystical convergence, the ideal vessel, and for that, she'd had to die.

            Such a pity.  She'd been a beautiful, happy little girl.

            Talot looked at his watch again.  Where were the final sacrifices?

            In that moment, a portal opened above his head and three girls fell out.  They landed on their feet.

            "Lovely," Talot said.

            "Where are we?" one of them asked.  She was wearing a filthy white dress and her dark hair was coming out of its ponytail.  "Never mind where we are," she said.  "Let's play world of pain."

            "Yummy pain sporkie hi-yah!" a blonde toddler said, her body wriggling in anticipation of the fight to come.

            The final little girl smiled charmingly at Talot.  "Hello," she said.  'This is my indoor voice."  Then she paused.  "AND THIS IS NOT MY INDOOR VOICE.  WORLD OF PAIN!"  With that yell, Claire launched herself at the man behind the desk, the hairs on the back of her neck standing straight up as her slayer senses told her that there was something wrong with him.

            Brookie giggled.  "Wait for me, Claire-y!"

            "No fair," Noelle grumbled as Claire pummeled Talot with her strong little fists.  "I wanted to play first."  She paused and sighed a very aggrieved sigh. "Fine," she said in a huff, "but I get to break his legs."

            Panicked, Talot pressed the emergency button on his desk, just as Brookie launched a flying kick at his knee cap.

            "AAAAAAARRRRRGGGG!" he yelled at the sound of bones breaking.

            Brookie patted his leg.  "World of Pain," she said happily.  "Squishy pain.  Boingee pain for you, happy squish for Brookie."

            "No fair," Noelle said, stomping her foot.  "I wanted to break his legs!"

            Talot gritted his teeth.  Where were his people?  He'd pressed the emergency button.  What was keeping them?

*~*~*~

            Angel slammed the man up against a wall.  "I want to know who kidnapped the little slayers," he said, "and I want to know now."

            The man groaned in pain.

            "I'd do the talky thing," Dawn advised him.  "Angel's looking kinda grumpy, and believe me, you don't want to mess with a grumpy Angel."

            _"Well, ain't that the truth?" Doyle asked with a grin, taking a swig of his ghost drink and watching the proceedings, interested._

_            "Okay," Cordelia said, shaking her head, "one, Angel is broody, not grumpy, and two, didn't we agree?  No more ghost drinks while you're air-quote working."_

_            Doyle grinned lazily at Cordy.  "The lass has it under control," he said.  "Take a breather, Queenie."_

_            Cordy grinned despite herself and sat down in Doyle's lap.  "This what you had in mind?" she asked._

_            "Could be," Doyle replied, beaming at her._

_            "Could be," Cordelia repeated, nuzzling him._

"Talot," the man shrieked finally, as Angel's fist came done on his face again.  "He's the son of a senior partner.  He transferred in here a year or so after you did.  He's been working on a secret project with his father's approval."  The man stuttered nervously, his already blackening eyes twitching.  "He's above your authority."

            Angel stared at the man.  

            Dawn winced.  "You shouldn't have said that," Dawn said.  "Grumpy Angel doesn't like having his authority questioned."

            Angel shot a look at Dawn.  All of this grumpy talk was making it hard to appear as deadly as he needed to.  

            Dawn shrugged.  "Like that's not true," she grumbled.  Then she shrugged and held her hands up in defeat when Angel glared at her.  "Vision girl," she said.  "Shutting up now."

            "Vision girl?" another voiced asked.

            Dawn whirled around.  Her mouth dropped open.  "Oh," she said, choruses of 'Big Trouble' playing in the back of her head.  "Hey Buffy."

            "Don't Hey Buffy me," Buffy said.  "You're having visions."  This explained so much about the past year, Buffy thought.  Her sister had been having visions, and she hadn't said anything about it.

            Dawn's eyes darted back and forth nervously.  "Angel knew," she said, shifting the blame.

            "Angel!" Buffy said.  

            Xander, appearing with Willow and a little girl behind Buffy, clicked his tongue.  "For shame, Dead Boy," he said.  "For shame."

            The little girl tugged on the bottom of Willow's pants, and Willow bent down.  Val, her eyes wide, whispered something in Willow's ears.  

            "Tara… I mean, Val is right, guys," Willow said, swallowing hard.  "We can all make with the yelling later, but right now, we need to find Brookie, Claire, and Noelle."

            Angel turned back to the man he had pinned against the wall.  "If you think I'm grumpy, just wait," he said.  He gestured with his head towards Buffy.  "That's the slayer."  

            "And she's pissed," Dawn added.

            Buffy stared the man down.  "Where are they?" she asked.

            Gulping, the man told them.

*~*~*~*~*~

            "I'm sorry, sir, but you can't go up there," the guard at the front desk of Wolfram and Hart said smoothly.

            "Like hell I can't," Lindsey said, his voice low and furious.  "You have my daughters."

            "Excuse me, Mr. McDonald?" a high, clear female voice interrupted.  Lindsey turned to look at a woman in her late twenties.   Everything about her screamed 'hell lawyer.'  "I'm afraid we can neither confirm or deny such an allegation, but I'll remind you that, in your time with this company, you signed a waver of custody agreement, extending to any and all descendents of joint interest to this company."  She paused.  "If they have your blood, technically, they are ours."

            Kate saw Lindsey struggling to gain control, but she didn't bother to herself.   Moving with pent up fury, her fist connected soundly with the woman's cheek bone.  

            The guard looked at Kate, amazed.  "You punched her," he said dumbly.

            Lindsey, his face serious, stepped in between Kate and the guard.  "We can neither confirm nor deny such a statement," he said, "but I'd remind you…" Lindsey trailed off and punched the guard.  "You have my daughters."

            More Wolfram and Hart lackeys filled the lobby.  "You asked for it," one of them said to Lindsey, preparing for a fight.  "You and the lady both."

            "NO!" Brandon wriggled down from Kate's arms and stamped his foot.  "You don't hurt them," he said, "and you don't hurt my Claire either!  Or Brookie or Noelle, cause I'm going to protect them and I want to see them now."  Brandon glared at the men with his mother's glare.  "NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW!"  He stomped his foot, and started muttering under his breath.

            "_Cayata__ ferishen tavolot tryot_," the little boy said.  Three of the men fell to the ground, convulsing, and Brandon, his body humming with the magic he was using, looked at the others.  "Now," he demanded.  "Where's my Claire?"  He paused.  "Not that I like her or anything, because I don't.  She's a girl, and I don't like girls, but you better tell me where she is anyway.  Now."

            Kate grinned.  "That's my boy," she said.  "That's my boy."

*~*~*~*~*~*~*

            "I bloody well don't understand this anymore than you do," Spike told Faith.  "I can't have a child, I'm dead."  He looked at Faith.  "And I'm pretty sure I'd remember, Slayer, if we…"

            "Bloody well," Kaya echoed wickedly.  

            "Kaya…" Faith and Spike said warningly at once.

            Kaya grinned at them both.  "Other Place," she said.  "Kaya's place."  

            Faith thought of what the faceless voice had said.  Her daughter had been conceived between the living and the dead and lived in both realms, and if the realms collapsed into each other…

            Faith forced the thought out of her head.  She'd die before she let something happen to Kaya.  

            Kaya tilted her head to the side, listening.

            "Sunny," she whispered.  "They want her."  Kaya shook her head.  "No," she said, her voice low and shaking.  "No."

*~*~*~*~

            Claire didn't see Talot grab the knife from his back pocket.  She didn't see the knife flash out at her throat.  

            Brookie saw it and screamed. 

            The blood splashed onto Noelle's pristine white dress.

            Like a madman, Talot slashed the knife at Noelle.  The little slayer jumped out of the way, but the knife cut through her dress, slicing the skin of her stomach open.

            The vial of blood around Talot's neck began to quiver, and, setting his sights on Brookie, he began muttering the incantation under his breath.

            "Tyrai, Death Goddess, this blood for you," he said.  Brookie backed away, her blue eyes wide.  Why wasn't Claire moving?  Why was Noelle crying?  Noelle didn't cry unless it was a war cry.  Why was there blood everywhere?  Everything was so red.  Why wasn't Claire moving?

            Talot, his leg broken from Brookie's kick, dragged himself along the ground, advancing on the toddler slayer.  He needed her blood, and the spell would be complete.  The sacrificial vessel would return, and with her, the Power of Tyrai.

            "Claire-y," Brookie whimpered.  Claire said nothing.  She wasn't moving.

*~*~*~*~*~

TBC… one more chapter… With Faith and Spike's help, Kaya meets the first leg of her destiny, and Angel and co and Brandon and Co find their way to Talot's office…

PLEASE REVIEW! 


	12. Death

DISCLAIMER: Joss owns the canon; I own everything else.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I promise you, I'm doing my best to finish this fic.  I imagine like a lot of my endings, it might be a bit cryptic or confusing, but bear with me, and I think everything should be explained.  Don't hesitate to ask if you're confused.  Oh, and for some reason, ff.net has decided to stop recognizing the symbols I normally use for section breaks, so whenever you see $$$$$, that's the new symbol for a page break… consider it in honor of Anya, my fave character.

SMALL PACKAGES: Chapter Twelve

            _The child's tortured cries echoed around the non-space, cutting through the air like a knife through tender skin. _

_            Darla slipped her hand into Sunny's small one and squeezed.  "It's alright, my darling girl."  _

_            The woman knew that it wasn't alright, and as the child's face contorted with another wave of pain, Darla wondered if anything would ever, could ever be alright again.  Sunny was a little girl, just a little girl.  _

_            The child writhed, her body convulsing._

_            It burned, burned like fire, burned like ice._

_            It burned like forever_

_Forever, forever, forever.__  The words danced through Sunny's head, and she screamed them in wordless, pained screams that wracked her body._

_Burned, burned, burned.  Forever, forever, forever._

_            With each lash of fire, blood rose on her pale white skin, twisting and turning until symbols formed on her tiny body._

_            Sunny could taste the salt of tears on her lips, and even the tears themselves burned, scorching down her face in a wake of blood._

_            Pain now.  Only pain.  Forever, forever, forever._

_            "My Darla," Sunny rasped between tortured screams.  "It's not okay.  It will never be okay.  I think I know why they hurt me now."_

_            "Hush, my darling," Darla crooned, cradling the child in her arms.  She rocked back and forth, whispering over her body with a fierceness that shook her own bones to the core.  "Let me take the pain.  She's just a child."  Darla spit out the words, caught between fury and anguish.  "Hurt me, not her.  Me."_

_              "They hurt me," Sunny said, her voice eerily calm even as her body bled, foreign symbols marking her child's flesh, "because they can."_

_$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$_

            "They're hurting her."  Kaya screamed the words, each one marked with the fury that only a small child, mid-tantrum, can express.

            "Sweetie, what are they doing to her?" Faith asked.  "Baby girl, it's alright.  Listen to Mommy.  I won't let anything hurt you."

            "Death,"  Kaya said, and hearing the word from the child's mouth froze Spike in place to the ground.  "My others, not yours, bad man!"  Kaya stomped her foot.  "Sunny mine.  Anya mine.  Jenny mine."

            Kaya tilted her head to the side, listening.  She nodded.  "Power," she said finally.  "Mine."

            She looked up at Spike, and he found himself looking into his own eyes, piercing blue eyes.  Stubbornly, the little girl weaved her hand through his.  "Mine," she repeated.

            She grabbed Faith's hand with her other.  "Mine."  She paused and looked at them both expectantly.  "Gimme," she said simply.

            Faith and Spike looked at each other, lost. 

            "SODDING GIMME!" Kaya stamped her foot.  "Power.  Mommy power.  Daddy power.  Kaya need.  Sodding gimme!"

            The only word Spike heard was Daddy, and the moment that term crossed Kaya's lips, he surrendered himself.  She was flesh of his flesh, soul of his soul.  She was his, and he was hers.  As they stood there, his power flowed into the child's body. 

            "Mommy?" Kaya said, making her voice nice all of a sudden.  Her skin had begun to glow with dark light, the color of a black opal, swirling midnight nothingness.  A bewitching color.

            Faith looked down at the child, the one thing that had ever really gone right in her life.  She'd die before she'd let anything hurt Kaya, kill to keep the child alive.

            "Just you, Mommy," the little girl said, her voice soft.  "Kaya just need you."

            Faith looked at the child and nodded, love swelling in her heart, and she felt heat rushing towards her hands.  The child threw her head back as Faith's power surged into her body, and after a moment, she rose slowly off the ground, her dark hair standing on end, and her blue eyes shining so brightly that Spike and Faith had to turn their heads away.

            Inside their heads, they heard a non-voice speak.

            _Child of life, child of death, child of that in between.  _

_            Call to her, child._

_            Bring her._

_            Power of life, power of death, power of that in between._

_            Call to her, child._

_            Bring her._

_            Bring her._

"Bloody wanker bring her," Kaya said decisively, and she nodded.  Faith bit back a grin, and the child, her little girl, rose further into the air, glowing so brightly that she disappeared behind the white light of her eyes and the swirling black glow surrounding her body. 

            Kaya squinted, peering off into the distance.  She could almost see something, almost hear it. 

            "Sunny," she said.  "My Sunny.  Come."

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

            "Claire-y?" Brookie whimpered, her eyes locked onto her sister's unmoving body.  Tears welled up in her light blue eyes, and she turned to look accusingly at the bleeding man who was making his way towards her, knife in hand.  "You hurt her," the little girl accused.  "Brookie doesn't like you."  The toddler slayer paused.  "Brookie must kill you now," she said finally, her voice wavering.

            Talot paused for a second.  His life had just been threatened by a seriously cranky two year old.  Granted, he'd killed the girl's sister, but still, to him it seemed a bit harsh.  All he'd wanted was the power of the dead.  Surely that wasn't too much to ask.

Some people had no appreciation for greatness, no vision.

"Easy there, little girl," Talot said, pulling himself and his broken leg along the ground, crawling towards Brookie, the knife still clenched in his hands.  "All I need is a bit of your blood."  He paused.  "All of it, actually."  He paused, reflective.  "It's not too much to ask, really.  I own you, legally speaking of course, thanks to Daddy dearest."  He glanced down at Claire, lying motionless on the ground, and at Noelle's paling face.  "All three of you signed over by your bloodkin before you were born," Talot continued.  "Such a pity."  He paused.  "Who am I kidding?  Such a convenience."

_"I'd like to 'convenience' his ass," Cordelia hissed, glaring at the evil doer.  What was taking Buffy and Angel so long?  Why weren't they here?  And why were those little girls lying so motionlessly on the floor._

_"Easy there, Princess," Doyle said, putting calming hands on Cordy's shoulders even as he clenched his own jaw in frustration.  How could they just sit there and watch the little slayers die?_

_A moment later, Cordelia felt her body being pulled in seven different directions, and the boundaries of her non-corporeal form blurred until the only thing she could feel was Doyle's hands.  "Doyle?"_

_"I'm here, love," Doyle said, for once leaving off calling her a ritzy nickname.  _

_"COME." The voice was high and childlike, ancient and commanding, and Cordy and Doyle heard it in their bones.  "COME."_

Talot reached out, knife in hand, ready to strike, but in that moment, his office exploded into chaos.  A little boy, yelling in Latin at the top of his lungs apparated into the room, bringing with him two angry adults.  At the exact same moment, the office door, which Talot had thought was suitably locked, flew open, and in charged a man he recognized as the former Angelus, followed by an obscenely large group of people, all of whom looked, to put it mildly, royally unpleased.

Desperate, Talot made a grab for Brookie, and the knife scraped across the surface of her skin before the little girl could react.

 With a roar, Lindsey leapt from Brandon's side, and in the next instant, Talot found himself slammed against the far wall.  "Take your hands off my daughter." Lindsey stared into the man's eyes, his voice low and dangerous.  In a single motion, Lindsey had Talot's knife in his hand at Talot's throat. 

"It's too late," Talot said, grinning from ear to ear.  "The third blood has been shed, granted, not all of the blood, but with the power of the sacrificial vessel to clear the way, it should be enough for my purposes.  Tyrai will come to me.  The power of Death will come to me.  Come, Tyrai.  Fill the vessel."

Lindsey spoke over his shoulder.  "Brookie, Claire, close your eyes."  Brookie squeezed her eyes shut, and without preamble, Lindsey slit Talot's throat.  "This is the power of death," he said, so softly that no one but Talot heard him.

  No one messed with Lindsey McDonald's children.  No one.

"Daddy," Brookie whimpered softly.  "Claire-y's eyes are already closed."

"Oh."  The single sound escaped Buffy's throat as her eyes landed on Claire and Noelle.  Both children were bleeding profusely.  Noelle's eyes were open, but Claire's were not, and as she looked at the little girl who'd been at her school since it had opened, Buffy felt something akin to anguish rising in her throat.  "Oh, Claire." 

She was too late.  She was supposed to protect them, but in the end, she'd done nothing but watch their father kill the man who'd murdered his daughter, all in the name of Death.  "Wills, is there anything you can do?"  Willow, Val in her arms, swallowed hard.  Playing with death was something she'd sworn never to do again.  Not even for a child.  Not even for Claire.

"Daddy, Claire won't play with Brookie," the little slayer said, indignant.  "Tell her to get up."

Kate, holding Brandon back with one hand, bit her bottom lip, and as Lindsey stared at Claire's broken body, Kate knelt down next to Brookie and pulled her into a fiercely tight hug.  Xander, his heart denying what his eyes saw, picked up Noelle and held the bleeding child tightly. 

"We have to help her," he said.  "We have to help them." 

_"Yes, help the small pig-tailed child, Xander," Anya encouraged, knowing that Xander wouldn't hear her, but unable to keep quiet.  "The profusely bleeding young human must-"_

_"COME."  The word, spoken with such incredible authority, forced Anya to stop babbling mid-sentence._

Lindsey took one look at Claire and felt himself being torn in two, right down the center of his heart. 

Claire, who'd always been loud, even as a baby.  Claire who'd bossed around everyone from the time she could walk.  Claire, who didn't have an indoor voice.  His sister's daughter, the child of his heart.  His beautiful, strong, kind Claire.  So full of life, and now, so dead.

As the blood dripped from Brookie's arm onto the floor, the sky outside the office darkened, and the earth began to rumble.

The third blood had been shed.

TBC… I decided to go ahead and post what I had instead of waiting to finish the whole story in this chapter.  There's more to come, lots more action, and the conclusion.  Sorry if it's gotten fast-paced and confusing, and sorry for the angst.  I hope you're enjoying.  Let me know what you think.

PLEASE REVIEW!


	13. Come

DISCLAIMER: Joss owns the canon.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Must…finish…fic…

SMALL PACKAGES: Chapter Thirteen

The earth shook his beneath his feet, but Lindsey McDonald saw nothing except for his Claire's face. Her eyes were closed, her skin pale. Her mouth was open like she was about to yell something out, but looking at her motionless body, Lindsey knew that his little girl would never speak again.

He remembered the day he'd found them, his little ones. Their mother had been his sister, a drunken teenage mother who didn't recognize the preciousness of the little girls she'd given birth to. He saw Claire as he'd seen her then, a cheerful two year old with a dirty face and a loud mouth in the threadbare clothing that signified the kind of poverty he'd known firsthand. Claire, his daughter from the moment he'd set his eyes on her, from the moment her mother had given her up. Claire, his salvation. His inspiration to be a good man. His baby.

Dead.

"Third blood," Dawn said, repeating the words Talot had said upon his death bed. "I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that it's not a happy third blood. More like a world endy third blood."

Lindsey stared into Claire's face. The world was ending around him, and all he could see was his dead child's closed eyes.

"Claire?" Brandon's voice broke into Lindsey's thoughts.

"Honey, no," Kate said, trying to pull the boy back and shield him bodily from the sight of the girl's body and from the debris falling as the earth shook.

"Claire, you stupid girl, get up," Brandon commanded imperiously.

"Claire-y?" Brookie whimpered. Why was Claire so quiet? Claire was never, ever quiet.

"Claire?" Brandon's voice broke as he looked at her. "She's not dead," he said suddenly, looking up at his mother. "I won't let her be dead. Being dead's for girls and Claire's not like normal girls!" With those words, the little boy broke free of her grasp and rushed to Claire's side.

"Wake up, Claire," he said. "You're so bossy, only now it's my turn to be bossy, and I say get up."

"She's not getting up." The words stuck in Lindsey's throat.

"Yes, she is," Brandon said. "Get. Up. Claire." He laid his hands on her, and Willow's eyes widened. It was so easy to forget that, beneath the little boy bravado, Brandon was one of the most powerful magical children she'd ever encountered, and his desire to perform the spell was great.

Willow flashed back, seeing herself at Tara's side, kneeling the way Brandon was kneeling next to Claire.

"Don't be sad, Willow," Val said in an almost inaudible voice. "Don't be sad. I'm here now."

"Come back, Claire. Come back. COME BACK." Brandon's voice grew louder. Power surged from his hands into the dead girl's body, and Willow, in the midst of the chaos of the falling debris and shaking ground, suddenly pictured his eyes growing black. Evil Brandon, now that was a scary thought.

"COME BA--"

Brandon's voice was cut off as a deep and intense silence fell over the room. The silence grew heavier and heavier in the air, not to be shattered by any voice or movement or sound. Then, through the silence, came a single voice. The voice, a baby voice, shook with power so ancient that it hurt just to listen to it.

_"Come. Kaya say come."_

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Faith felt the power emanating from her daughter, and as the final words left the toddler's mouth, all she could do was wonder what in the world her daughter had been born into this world to do. The bodiless voice had told her that Kaya was a child of neither life or death, that she was the heir to a legacy that mortals couldn't even begin to understand, but to Faith, she was just a kid. Her kid.

"Come," Kaya yelled, the same way she yelled when the swings were full on the playground or when someone took the last graham cracker. "Kaya say come."

Faith felt a ripple of power go through her body, and she found herself staring into Spike's eyes. He stared back into hers, and in that moment, she remembered everything she'd forgotten.

_Their bodies, melding into one. Seeing into his past, his soul. Her heart beating next to his chest, and knowing, in that instant, that this was what she'd been missing all along. They were as one person, and for the first time in her life, when he held her, she knew she wasn't alone._

The same memories scoured through Spike's mind, and when he looked back into Faith's eyes, he knew. Kaya was their child because a greater power had brought the living slayer and the dead vampire together, but once they'd come together, in his memory, Spike couldn't seem to even imagine that it had ever been any other way.

This was what they had forgotten. This was the love from which Kaya had been born, and this: this moment, this power, this was the child's destiny and their destiny in her.

"Kaya say come!"

The air around them shuddered with power, and in the next instant, a light so bright that mortal eyes could not look upon it shined from the child, pouring out of her very pores.

_Born from death_

_ Born from life_

_ Born from both and neither_

As the loudly unspoken words faded from the air, so did the light streaming out of Kaya's body, and the little girl fell from the air where she'd been floating, into Spike's arms. Immediately, Faith threw her arms around the girl. "Are you alright, baby girl?"

Spike stroked a hand over the back of Kaya's head. "Gave us a scare there, Bitlet," he said. His hand brushed against Faith's, and they looked at each other, the memory of their joining still nearly palpable between them.

"Kaya been busy," Kaya said, and with that, the child pointed over Spike's shoulder. "Hello, others," she said wickedly. "Hello, Sunny!"

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Willow felt the power surging into the office from the lobby below, but she couldn't guess at its source. All she knew was that a power more ancient than that of hatred was at work, and something was about to happen.

_Born from death_

_ Born from life_

_ Born from both and neither_

Willow wasn't sure whether the others heard the words or not, but as soon as they were spoken, the air trembled and filled with light. Willow felt Val slip from her hands and onto the floor, and as she tried to shield her eyes from the light, the Wiccan saw the little girl's form blurring.

"Val," Willow whispered, horrified. "Tara." She'd only just gotten her back, and they'd already lost so much today with Claire. Willow wasn't sure she could take it if something happened to Val, too, and she was about to turn her resolve face on the unbearable light when the boundaries of Val's body blurred and another form emerged from Val's. It stepped out of her body and uncurled into the shape of a woman.

Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the bright light was gone, and Willow stared at the little girl in front of her and the woman standing beside her.

"Willow." Tara only said one word, but it was all she needed to say.

"Tara," Willow said.

"Xander," Anya cried joyfully across the room. "Now we can have sex and you can cease your nocturnal masterbations."

"Anya," Xander hissed, but in the next instant, he realized what he'd just said and realized that the woman he'd lost was actually standing there in front of him. "Anya?"

"Let's kiss and then find a more convenient sex location," Anya said with a cheerful smile. "And I would like to hold some currency. The lack of ghost currency is shocking." Without waiting for Xander to respond, Anya pulled him into a long kiss.

"Cordy," Doyle yelled jovially. "You're alive." Following Anya's move, Doyle pulled Cordelia into an equally passionate kiss. Cordy kissed him back and then broke off and smacked him.

"Doyle, you're alive, too," she said. "It's not like you haven't seen me in, oh, I don't know, the last five minutes?"

Doyle shrugged and then, with a mischievous grin, kissed her again, soundly on the lips. After a long moment, he pulled back. "Angel," he said inclining his head.

"How?" Angel asked.

"Is this just a dead come to life party or something?" Dawn asked. "You know, BYOB- bring your own body?"

"Can't say I know," Doyle said, "but I'm not about to be looking this gift horse in the mouth." He paused. "I could use a drink."

On the ground, below all of the commotion, Brandon stared at Claire. He'd done the spell. He knew he'd done it, as best he could, and it should have worked. Where was she? Why wasn't she coming back?

_"WHY CAN'T ANYONE HEAR ME?" Claire demanded, stomping her foot. "LISTEN TO ME. I AM CLAIRE!"_

"Claire?" Brandon turned to look over his shoulders. There, standing behind him, he could see the outline of her body. His heart sank. His spell had only partially worked. He hadn't brought back. He'd made her a ghost.

_"YOU CAN HEAR ME, CAN'T YOU __BRANDON__? BROOKIE, CAN YOU HEAR ME?" Ghost-Claire stomped her foot. This ghost business was no fun, not if no one could hear her. How was she supposed to boss people around if no one could hear her?_

"Claire-y!" Brookie jumped up and down excitedly. "You're see-through, Claire-y. Like jello."

Lindsey glanced over his shoulder, hoping against hope that Claire would be standing there. He saw nothing. Some power had brought the long dead back to life, but Claire, his Claire, was still dead.

TBC… this just keeps getting longer and longer. The next chapter is the last for sure… the dead and the living catch up, ghost Claire wreaks havoc, and a few more mysteries are explained.

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	14. All About

DISCLAIMER: Joss owns the canon; I own the rest.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: And the last chapter is finally here. Yippee! Thank you all for baring with me through block, through other fics that have commandeered my attention, and through real life and all its interfering ways. It's taken a year, but I've enjoyed having you with me every step of the way, and I hope you've enjoyed the story. I had originally planned for a sequel, and someday, I may write it, but for now, the journey ends here. Thanks for reading.

Also, I'm ship neutral in general, and the ships in this fic just fell the way they did. Trust me when I say that the pairings you will see this chapter are simply the way things were meant to be in this fic and try to enjoy the story's end regardless of your personal ship preferences.

SMALL PACKAGES: Chapter Fourteen

_"AND YOU DO THE GHOST HOKEY POKEY AND YOU TURN YOURSELF ABOUT…" Claire screamed at the top of her lungs. She hopped up and down, relishing the fact that she could stay in the air as long as she wanted._

_ It had taken her a week, but she was finally getting used to this ghost business and all its ups and downs. Nobody ever told her to be quiet anymore, except for Brandon and Brookie, but that was only when she was screaming real loud, and she didn't have to listen to them anyway, because Brookie was just a little kid and Brandon was a boy, and every ghost girl knew that boys didn't know anything at all._

_ She had Brookie to play with, and __Brandon__ and Noelle, and, of course, Kaya. Noelle wasn't so much fun anymore now that Claire couldn't play with weapons, but sometimes, when she concentrated really hard, she could lift a glaive or a crossbow or a stake. That really surprised everyone who couldn't see her._

_ Most of them didn't believe she was there. Daddy didn't, even though she went into his dreams at nighttime and even though once, when she'd been missing him really badly, he'd seen her and held her and called her his Claire-bear, just like he used to when she'd been little, like Brookie._

_ Brandon's Mommy didn't believe she was there, either, so Brandon didn't talk about Claire to her, or to anyone except for Brookie, Noelle, and Kaya. _

_ "…THAT'S WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT!"_

"Be quiet," Brandon hissed. "Besides, that song's for girls."

_"Is not," Claire said, her hands on her hips. She loved arguing with __Brandon__, and even though she wouldn't have admitted it, she loved __Brandon__, too._

"That song is too for girls," Brandon said. "And anyway, it's not supposed to be the ghost hokey pokey. It's just the regular hokey pokey."

_"AND YOU DO THE REGULAR HOKEY POKEY AND YOU…"_

Brandon groaned. If Claire had been loud and girly when she'd been a real little girl, she was a million times louder and more girly as a ghost. His stomach clenched a little when he thought about the words, because Brandon knew deep down that it was his fault that Claire was a ghost. It was his fault that the bad man had killed her, because he hadn't gotten there soon enough to save her, and it was his fault she was a ghost, because he hadn't been strong enough to bring her all the way back. Worse, Brandon knew something that he wasn't supposed to know. He'd heard the grown-ups talking, all of them, even the ones who used to be dead but weren't anymore, and Miss Willow had said that Kaya had brought Sunny back to end the spell, and all the rest of those dead people had come along for the ride. Maybe if he hadn't tried to bring Claire back in the first place, Kaya would have done it for him, and then she would have been real Claire instead of ghost Claire.

_"Brandon, do the hokey pokey with me," Claire ordered imperiously. "Here, I'll show you how." She spun around in circles, screaming at the top of her ghost lungs. "AND YOU DO THE BRANDON AND CLAIRE HOKEY POKEY AND YOU TURN YOURSELF ABOUT."_

Finally, Brandon gave in. "That's what it's all about," he muttered, trying to pretend that he wasn't having a good time when he was. Then again, maybe it was okay to like Claire now, because it wasn't like Claire was actually a girl. She was a ghost girl, and that was something entirely different.

$$$$$

"Come on, Sunny," Kaya said impatiently.

Sunny glanced over her shoulder at the blonde woman standing next to Kaya's mommy and daddy.

"Go ahead, sweetheart," Darla said, her voice low and breathy. "Go play." Sunny hesitated for a moment and then ran back to Darla, throwing herself at the woman's legs. Instinctively, Darla's arms curved around the child, hugging her tightly.

Sunny's blonde hair shined in the sunlight, and Darla marveled at the fact that she was standing in sunlight, next to Spike and a slayer, and none of them were in the least bit of danger of being set on fire, staked, or bitten. All this from a child not even old enough to tie her own shoes, a child who this moment looked on the verge of a tantrum.

Kaya frowned fiercely at Sunny. Before, she'd always understood what her Sunny was feeling and thinking. She'd always understood what all of her others were thinking, but now that they were alive, now that she'd done what the Big Voice had told her to and brought them back, she couldn't understand them nearly so well, except for Spike, who was Daddy now. Kaya understood Daddy perfectly, because deep down, Daddy was like Mommy, and Kaya was like them both.

Spike smiled just looking at the little girl he was just beginning to fully realize was his own. She looked more like Faith than she did like him, but she had his eyes and his mouth and his heart. She had a temper, too, but he wasn't about to take credit for that one, not when the child's mother had one that matched his, fury for fury.

He looked at Faith out of the corner of his eyes, and he saw her, as he had since the memory of Kaya's conception had come back to him, as a woman. She was beautiful and rough and still full of the pain she'd tried so hard for Kaya's sake to forget. She was strong and feminine and primal, and even though he'd retained most of his vampire strength when he'd crossed back over to the realm of the living, she could still occasionally kick his ass.

He hadn't said the words, and maybe he wouldn't ever, but he loved her. Maybe the people in charge, the Big Voice and that lot, had messed with his mind when they'd used his body to father Kaya, but when he looked at Faith or at his daughter, it simply didn't matter. He loved them, and when Faith looked back at him, when her lips covered his and he looked into eyes that had been to as many dark places as he had, he felt worthy of that love.

"Go on, darling," Darla said, tactfully ignoring the way Spike and Faith were devouring each other with their eyes as she spoke to Sunny. "Go play with Kaya." Darla hated to let Sunny out of her grip. The child had suffered so much in the years since that hideous man at Wolfram and Hart had sacrificed her as the first step in preparing to raise the Death Goddess. With every day that had passed, every action that Talot had taken to bring his dream closer to reality, Sunny had suffered, the ancient magic tearing at her ghostly flesh, burning into her skin. Her pain had been meant to fuel an apocalypse, and all that time, she'd suffered. Now that they were alive again, now that Talot's plan had been foiled by Kaya's reversal of Sunny's sacrifice, Darla found herself worrying more and more about the little things that might harm her darling little girl.

What if the other children on the playground were mean to her? What if she fell of the slide? What if she hadn't put enough sunscreen on? What if…

"Mommy?" Sunny said tentatively. "Are you okay?" Sunny watched Darla's reaction carefully. It was the first time she'd referred to the woman as her mother, and she wanted to know if it was okay.

Tears rose in Darla's eyes. Mommy. Had things worked out differently, her son might have called her that, innocence in his voice and his heart in his eyes. Darla pushed the thought out of her head. She'd had a son, and she would never forget him, but now, she had a daughter. "I'm fine, darling baby girl," she said. "You and Kaya go play."

"Be careful, Bitlet," Spike said as the little girls scampered off to play on the swing set.

"Don't swing too high," Darla caught herself saying. What was happening to her? She'd been a ruthless killer who knew no fear, and now she was telling a four year old girl to beware the dangers of swing sets?

"Don't hit anyone," Faith called out sternly to Kaya..

"Only if they deserve it," Kaya called back. Ever since she'd brought the dead back to life, she'd shed her baby talk and begun talking in longer and longer sentences.

Spike couldn't help but grin. His little girl was a fighter. "Listen to your mum," he told her, trying to be stern.

"No fighting," Faith said again in her serious Mommy voice.

"And no raising the dead," Spike added. Some of the other parents at the playground shot him a strange look, and Spike tried his best to look casual and not like a formerly dead, formerly evil former vampire and the father of a child who had the kind of power in her pinky that men had in the past and would in the future kill for. "Ho hum," he said under his breath.

Faith elbowed him in the chest. "Real casual," she said. "Not suspicious at all."

Spike prepared himself for a verbal spar. Aside from the physical sparring and the physical…not sparring, there were few things he liked better than matching his sarcasm against Faith's.

Darla rolled her eyes. "Here we go again," she said under her breath.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Lindsey sat, staring at his phone. He'd put in a few calls and was expecting his answer back any minute.

"Angel had the papers drawn up to null and void the bloodline codicil in all employees' contracts." Kate put her hand over his. Ever since Claire's death, he'd been a man on a mission, and Kate, knowing what it felt like to devote your life to something like that, knew exactly the words he needed to hear.

"They thought they could just take her because of something I'd signed when I was stupid and young," he said lowly.

"It's not your fault."

"All heirs, wards, and the first generation of direct and indirect blood descendents," Lindsey quoted. "I signed away my daughters," he said. "Even if I'd never adopted them, even if they'd stayed in that hellhole of Lauren Ann's, Wolfram and Hart would have found them. I signed away my nieces and my nephews and any children I could ever have." Lindsey looked up at Kate, his face anguished. "What gave me the right to do that? What gave me the goddamned right?"

He looked back at the phone. "And Noelle?" he said, stumbling over the name of Claire's friend, the third little girl who'd been used by Talot in his stupid sacrificial games. "Who gave someone the right to sign away her life? Who signed away her life?" Deep down, he knew. It was written all over the child's face.

"It wasn't your fault," Kate said. "It wasn't."

"Brookie thinks she can see her," Lindsey said, and Kate knew that he wasn't referring to Noelle. "My two year old daughter thinks she can see her dead sister."

"It's not your fault," Kate said. Then she paused. "And maybe Brookie can see her," she said. "Maybe she is here, near us, near Brookie and Brandon and everyone who loved her."

Lindsey stared at her.

"I've been a skeptic, Lindsey, and if this past month has taught me anything, if my son, that amazing little boy that I have never and will never deserve has taught me anything at all, it's that miraculous things happen when you least expect them. There are things out there we don't understand." Kate stopped talking as Lindsey squeezed her hand.

"You understand me," he said. He'd been through too much for pretenses right now, so he spoke his mind. "You understand me."

For a moment, they stared at each other in silence, Kate sharing Lindsey's pain, and then, the phone rang.

"Lindsey McDonald." Lindsey answered the phone and then paused for a moment. "I knew it," he said, and then, without another word, he hung up the phone.

Kate arched an eyebrow at him. If Lindsey wanted to explain, he would.

"Noelle's mother," Lindsey said. "That abominable woman who dresses her daughter in those frilly white dresses and pretends Potential is a school for creative children, is named Lyra. Lyra Covington." Lindsey paused. "Before she was married, her name was Lyra Morgan, and she had one older sister."

Kate rested her head on Lindsey's chest. This meant little to her, but it meant something to Lindsey.

Noelle was Lilah's niece.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

"You're sure you want to do this?" Angel asked, for maybe the millionth time since Buffy had told him she was making the move from Cleveland to LA.

"If you keep asking that, I'm going to think you don't want me around," Buffy said.

"You know it's not that." Angel's voice was low and awkward.

Buffy looked up at him. "I want to be near Dawn," she said. "With Tara and Anya back, not to mention Darla and Spike…" Buffy rushed over Spike's name. Seeing him look at Faith the way he did, seeing Spike with Kaya was still a little too much for her. "Potential doesn't need me anymore," Buffy continued, swallowing the lump in her throat. "They could take on twice as many kids and still not need me.

"With the new visiony gig, Dawn needs me," Buffy said.

Angel gave her a look.

"Okay, so maybe it's not exactly new, and maybe she doesn't exactly need me, but…" Buffy trailed off. Once upon a time, she'd had the world on her shoulders, and now, she wasn't sure what she had.

Angel met her eyes. "I need you." His words surprised her. "I've always needed you."

Thoughts ran through Buffy's head at warp speed: thoughts of time lost, of friends dead and back, of the insides of coffins, and of a small girl's body, lying motionless on the floor. She spoke into Angel's chest, words that she hadn't let herself say for so long.

"I need you too."

It wasn't 'I love you,' but it was a start.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

"Hokey-pokey-okey-bokey…" Brookie bounced up and down, happily doing her version of the hokey pokey with ghost Claire. Brandon pushed down the desire to cover his ears and smiled at Brookie.

She was just a little kid, and she missed Claire, so Brandon needed to be nice to her. Besides, Claire thought that her daddy and his mommy were going to get married some day, and then Brookie would be his little sister, just like she'd been Claire's little sister when Claire was alive.

The way Brandon figured it, it was his job to look after Brookie now, the way he wished he'd looked after Claire.

"…tokey-lokey-mokey…" Brookie broke into delighted giggles. "Sporkie!" she added. "C'mon, Brandon, do the Sporkie Pokey with me and Claire-y."

_"It's Hokey Pokey," Claire informed her sister loftily. "Say Hokey Pokey, Brookie." Once a bossy older sister, always a bossy older sister._

_ She grabbed at __Brandon__'s hand, and for a moment, she could feel it, and they were holding hands for real, her hand solidified by touching his._

Brandon grinned at Claire, his Claire. Some day, he promised himself, he'd bring her back for real, but for now, he took Brookie's hand in his other, and the three of them did the Sporkie Hokey Pokey and turned themselves about.

Across town, at the playground, Kaya waited until the swing reached its peak and jumped off, soaring to a height that would have had most parents gawking in fear. She landed with a grin, and tilting her head to the side, a sure sign that she was seeing or hearing something that others couldn't see, whispered under her breath.

"That's what it's all about."

FIN

It's been a long, crazy ride, and I know some of you probably hoped to see more Tara/Willow, Xander/Anya, or Doyle/Cordelia in the closing, but I hope you enjoyed anyway. Let me know what you thought.

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